quotations about socialism
The socialist economy has become so strong, so vigorous that from the summits we have reached we can issue an open challenge of peaceful economic competition to the most powerful capitalist country--the United States of America.
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
concluding speech to twenty-second congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, October 27, 1961
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"
We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
"Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom", September 1867
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
Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.
JOSE ANTONIO VIERA GALLO
foreword, Energy and Equity
Socialism is not feasible. It is a myth of dreamy minds. It has an idealistic atmosphere and is attractive to those who lag in the struggle of life. Its worst feature is that it deceives the people who conscientiously seek relief in it. Its leadership thrives because its impracticability prevents the experimental tests that would expose its sophistry.
JOHN CALHOUN TUTT
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
If Socialism is a legitimate form of government, why have not the forces of government evolved it? The age of experiment has long since passed. We have had repetition over and over again, but no materialization of Socialism. Government is purely human, and until there is a new creation there will never be anything new in government.
JOHN CALHOUN TUTT
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
Our governments told us that socialism was the real enemy, and that we would have freedom, but the foreign powers and corporations were the ones with real freedom, the freedom to take all the wealth generated by our work and our land and gave us only a small percentage of the scraps from the table. Their lust for power and their greed drove them to betray not only us but themselves and the word of their own God. (Open your eyes before you die.)
IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE
"Open Your Eyes"
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
If socialism is a nonentity in the experiencing world, then what is it in reality? I have argued that in the experiencing world, what was set up was not socialism but statism. Statism is a fact whereas socialism is a faith or a belief. Reality and ideal enter into conflict with each other. This conflict was most evident in Maoist China. Maoism had a commitment to ideal (socialism), unwilling to bow to the fact of statism. The Cultural Revolution is in essence a conflict between statism as a fact and socialism as a faith.
HENRY WANG
Socialism and Governance: A Comparison Between Maoist and Dengist Governance
We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system! And with my inclination to practical action it seems obvious to me that we have to put a better, more just, more moral system in its place, one which, as it were, has arms and legs and better arms and legs than the present one!
GREGOR STRASSER
"Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future", June 15, 1926
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
GEORGE ORWELL
The Road to Wigan Pier
In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country.
GEORGE ORWELL
preface to the Ukrainian edition, Animal Farm
I, who said forty years ago that we should have had Socialism already but for the Socialists, am quite willing to drop the name if dropping it will help me to get the thing.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism
In seeking greater justice and equality in economic conditions, Socialism rests on a strong moral basis; but in seeking no more than greater material ease and comfort, it betrays the presence of mortality.
FRANKLIN VERZELIUS NEWTON PAINTER
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
If Socialism is what its friends say it is, it should be commended; if it is what its enemies say it is, it should be condemned.
FRANKLIN VERZELIUS NEWTON PAINTER
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
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
I believe that for the past twenty years there has been a creeping socialism spreading in the United States.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
speech to Republican leaders in Custer State Park, South Dakota, June 11, 1953
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
The right still denounces socialism as an economic system that will lead to misery and privation, but with less emphasis on the political authoritarianism that often went hand in hand with socialism in power. This may be because elites today do not have democratic rights at the forefront of their minds -- perhaps because they know that the societies they run are hard to justify on those terms.
BHASKAR SUNKARA
"Socialism's Future May Be Its Past", New York Times, June 26, 2017