John McDonnell Quotes

Anything which dominates the life of the community should be owned by the community.

Socialism, reduced to its simplest legal and practical expression, means the complete discarding of the institution of private property by transforming it into public property, and the division of the resultant public income equally and indiscriminately among the entire population.

The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment to those excluded from the appropriation.

In the back of my mind, always, is the firmly held belief that public policies must serve the long-term interests and well-being of the community at large.

We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists--believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.

We approach closer and closer to socialism.

Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.

Socialism values equality more than liberty.

The goal of socialism is a fairer allocation of economic resources, which its advocates often claim will also be a less wasteful one. Socialism is about who gets the goods and how. Socialism objects to markets because markets allocate resources in ways socialists believe to be unfair on both counts: both the who and the how.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

Like many countries, Indonesia can transform its decision-making system to be more transparent and inclusive, particularly on resource allocation and use.

Socialism is a scientific scheme of national organization, entirely wise, just, and practical. It is a kind of national cooperation. Its programme consists, essentially, of one demand, that the land, and all other instruments of production and exchange, shall be the common property of the nation, and shall be used and managed by the nation for the nation.

The common good may sometimes demand that the right to own be limited by public involvement in the planning or ownership of certain sectors of the economy.

Ownership is a social function, to be exercised within the objectives of the Society and the plans of the State.

Private interests must be made subservient to the general interests of the community

There are certain public needs that outweigh private interests.

We have to be guided by the interest of society and the development of the state.

It's time to put back on the agenda the importance of public ownership and public good, the value of working together collaboratively, not in competition.

Defining of the public interest is always very, very difficult.

I understand by socialism a society in which the aim of production is not profit, but the use. In which the individual citizen participates responsibly in his work, and in the whole social organization, and in which he is not a means who is employed by capital.

The earth was given to mankind to support the greatest number of which it is capable, and no tribe or people have a right to withhold from the wants of others more than is necessary for their own support and comfort.

In fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.

The controversy as to whether socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists, and it is a fundamental axiom of my philosophy, at any rate, that anything that exists, is possible.

Socialist democracy is not a luxury but an absolute, essential necessity for overthrowing capitalism and building socialism.

We also need to find a language capable of defending government as an element of the common good, one that does not define itself as both a punishing and corporate state. This is not merely a matter of redefining sovereignty, but also rethinking what is distinctive about the social state, social responsibility, and the common good.