Donald Sassoon Quotes
… conservatives are ideologically committed to capitalism, and do not object to being guided by market signals, while socialists have had to accept, often unwittingly, that capitalist prosperity is an indispensable condition for social welfare and working-class well-being.
Donald Sassoon, Political & Economic Historian, Political Scientist, One Hundred Years of Socialism, 1996
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
By producing growth and an increasing standard of living and universal education, capitalism’s citizens have the time, education, and resources to protest and produce social unrest. However, that assumes that there is also a democratic state. For Schumpeter and many others, capitalism and democracy go hand in hand, but many point to historical examples of one developing faster than the other.
One important observation of this quotation is the pejorative language Mises used to describe “Union Bosses” as opposed to “Union Leaders.” There were indeed a few Union “Bosses” but most unions had popularly elected leaders. It is similar to the left wing critic who refers to Corporate Executives as “Greedy Monopolists.” A few are but most are not. Historically, in the last half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the conservatives tended to be much better at pejorative language and used it more frequently and uniformly than the liberals who tended to be better in the last part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
This was an honest theoretical belief of Mises. However, most of the criticism of capitalism in the industrial democracies is precisely the lack of unemployment and sustenance for all. When it does, even complaints about inequality tend to be minimal. But some capitalist societies never provided these, and by the 21st century, no capitalist nation was able to do so permanently without recessions and depressions.
Many of the far left grew disillusioned with the British Labor Movement and how it was relating to the capitalist companies, the government, and the workers. The Unions had become very undemocratic and controlling with the government pressuring both labor and companies to the degree that many felt that the institutions themselves were no longer free institutions. Ironically, they preferred the open competition of the American system at the time where unions and companies were free to fight out their differences.
