Moses I. Finley Quotes
Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language.
Finley, Moses I. Democracy Ancient and Modern. Rutgers University Press, 1973, p. 53.
This is an interesting historical quotation in that the same political environment existed in the first two decades of the 21st century. She was in particular referring to the slander that was commonly used by her fellow Republican, Senator Joseph P. McCarthy in his demagoguery. She was the first member of the Senate to Condemn McCarthy for his abuse and lies. Led by her example, the other senators got over their fear of McCarthy attacking them and the Senate Censured the Demagogue.
The Hapsburg Empire involved Austria, Hungary as the major cultures and then dozens more including Roman Catholics, several Eastern Orthodox from different cultures, Protestants of various sects, Jews, Muslims all speaking many different languages. The Republicans had the Tea Party, Christian Evangelicals, economic conservatives, cultural liberals, gays, anti gays, small businesses and huge corporations.
This was a private speech he made to his corruption inspectors. At this point in time, there was extensive corruption of the millions of local officials of the ruling Communist Party then a generation of two from the idealism of the original communists who fought in the Chinese Revolution. The common people were beginning to complain and demonstrate against local officials who were making things worse by what even the heavy handed Chinese party leaders considered heavy handed. The inspectors were coming under great pressure as the anti-corruption campaign was producing a blowback from local officials and the corrupt officials were so numerous that they could represent a destabilization threat in a political culture where stability was the highest priority. The anti-corruption campaign was an attempt to regain “party discipline”. See Quotation 643893.
Sir Moses Israel Finley, FBA was an American-born British academic and classical scholar. His prosecution by the United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security during the 1950s resulted in his relocation to England, where he became an English classical scholar and eventually master of Darwin College, Cambridge. His most notable publication is The Ancient Economy (1973) in which he argued that the economy in antiquity was governed by status and civic ideology, rather than rational economic motivations.
