Socialism

 


 

[1911]  Roberto Michels,  La sociologia del partito politico nella democrazia moderna [Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie], seconda edizione riveduta e accresciuta 1925, il Mulino, Bologna, 1966

-  "Durante la guerra, in Germania, i socialdemocratici non si stancarono mai di attribuire gli iniziali successi militari dell'esercito tedesco alla disciplina e all'ordine che essi dicevano di avere istituito. La loro ingerenza nella vita statale spesso appare simile a quella della gendarmeria." (p. 217)

-  "Dopo lo sfacelo morale della socialdemocrazia tedesca, avvenuto durante la prima guerra mondiale, e la perdita quasi completa del prestigio internazionale di cui godeva, il socialismo russo ha preso il posto di quello tedesco nella guida dei partiti degli altri paesi, ma con un assolutismo ancora più rigido e severo trattandosi di un partito divenuto governo." (pp. 245-246)

-  "Il socialismo pervenuto al governo esercita una potente forza di attrazione sulle nature parassite." (p. 352)

-  "I socialisti potrebbero anche vincere, ma il socialismo mai, poiché questo non sarebbe più tale nell'attimo stesso della vittoria dei suoi sostenitori. Si sarebbe tentati di parlare di tragicommedia: le masse, dopo aver compiuto tanti sforzi, si accontentano di cambiare un padrone con un altro. I lavoratori hanno avuto soltanto l'onore di 'participer au recrutement gouvernemental'." (pp. 520-521)

 

[1911]  Gustav Landauer, For Socialism, Telos Press, St. Louis, 1978

-  "Just as they [the German Social Democrats] consider the production forms of steam technology in capitalism to be a socialist form of labor, so they consider the centralized state to be the social organization of society and bureaucratically administered state-property to be common property! These people really have no instinct for what society means. They haven't the least idea that society can only be a society of societies, only a federation, only freedom. They therefore do not know that socialism is anarchy and federation." (p. 70)

-  "Socialism is not a science, although it does require all sorts of knowledge - a necessary condition of giving up superstition and false living in favor of treading the right path. However socialism is certainly an art, a new art that seeks to build with living material." (pp. 137-138)

 

[1913]  Hilaire Belloc,  The Servile State, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1977

-  "... the socialist ideal, in conflict with and yet informing the body of capitalism, produces a third thing very different from the socialist ideal - to wit, the servile state." (p. 29)

-  "It is becoming increasingly certain that the attempted transformation of capitalism into collectivism is resulting not in collectivism at all, but in some third thing which the collectivist never dreamt of, or the capitalist either; and that third thing is the servile state: a state, that is, in which the mass of men shall be constrained by law to labor to the profit of a minority, but, as the price of such constraint, shall enjoy a security which the old capitalism did not give them." (p. 138)

-  "... the whole capitalist state can be rapidly and easily transformed into the servile state, satisfying in its transformation the more immediate claims and the more urgent demands of the social reformer whose ultimate objective indeed may be the public ownership of capital and land, but whose driving power is a burning pity for the poverty and peril of the masses." (p. 144)

 

[1938]  Ignazio Silone,  La scuola dei dittatori, Mondadori, Milano, 2001

-  "L'internazionalismo del movimento operaio ... è sfociato in varie forme di socialpatriottismo e presso gli estremisti nell'asservimento all'imperialismo sovietico. Il socialismo è stato quasi ovunque nazionalizzato, come le ferrovie e le PPTT." (p. 25)

 

[1938]  George Orwell,  Homage to Catalonia, with Looking back on the Spanish War, Penguin, Harmondwsorth, 1983

-  "One had been in a community [the International Brigades] where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all." (p. 376)

 

[1948]  George Orwell,  Nineteen Eighty-Four, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1999

-  "... in each variant of Socialism that appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of establishing liberty and equality was more and more openly abandoned." (p. 211)

-  "It had always been assumed that if the capitalist class were expropriated, Socialism must follow: and unquestionably the capitalist had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport - everything had been taken away from them: and since these things were no longer private property, it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc, which grew out of the earlier socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist programme; with the result, foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent." (p. 215)

-  "... the Party rejects and vilifies every principle which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism." (p. 225)

-  "Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of facts. The Ministry of Peace concern itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of plenty with starvation." (p. 225)

 

[1976]  Jean-François Revel,  La Tentation Totalitaire, Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1976

-  "La seule version du socialisme que connaissent les régimes autoritaires centralisés, c'est la nationalisation, plus exactement l'étatisation de l'économie." (p. 132)

-  "Le nationalisme oriente le socialisme dans une direction unique, goulet d'étranglement de toute véritable démocratie économique : je veux parler de l'idée fixe de la nationalisation. Jusqu'à présent, dans la pratique, les socialistes n'ont rien imaginé d'autre que de rendre propriétaire des moyens de production l'Etat, sacré, sur sa seul bonne mine, incarnation  de la collectivité et de l' 'intérêt général'. Bien que l'expérience ait largement démontré que le monopole économique de l'Etat était néfaste à la production aussi bien agricole qu'industrielle, les ravages combinés de la fascination totalitaire, de la haine de l'entreprise privée et de la régression vers la mentalité nationaliste prélogique, font que le socialistes assoupis ne cherchent sérieusement rien d'autre que cette potion primitive d'alchimiste barbare, cette clef magique ouvrant infailliblement la porte à la pénurie totalitaire." (p. 380)