George Bernard Shaw Quotes

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff

Our boasted freedom necessarily involves slavery, so long as we recognize private property in land. Until that is abolished, Declarations of Independence and Acts of Emancipation are in vain.

Property, said Proudhon, is theft. This is the only perfect truism that has been uttered on the subject.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

As the egalitarianism of Marxism is attractive to many, socialism could have attracted many followers in America, anyway. But there is no doubt that it could not possibly have affected us so widely and so deeply as it has, had it not been heavily financed.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

If being rightwing is thinking that Karl Marx's doctrine was a catastrophe for humanity, then I'm rightwing.

SOCIALISM—You have two cows, you give one to your neighbor; COMMUNISM—You have two cows, the government takes them both and gives you the milk; FASCISM—You have two cows, the government takes both and sells you the milk NAZISM—You have two cows, the government takes both and shoots you; CAPITALISM—You have two cows, you sell one and buy a bull; TRADE UNIONISM—You have two cows, they take them from you, shoot one, milk the other and throw the milk away; MORAL: Don't have anything to do with cows. They only bring you trouble.

The social order we have built recognizes no exploitation of man by man. In our country there are no rich people to live at the expense of the workers and peasants. Just as there are no poor people living on the charity of others.

So fiercely has the course of modern legislation turned against landowners as to render it merely a question of time, and no long time, when they … shall be broken up. The squirearchy have had long innings; may the new order that is to replace it make our country better for all sorts and conditions of men.

The worker retains no respect for the property “rights” of the profit-takers … He knows that the present laws of property were made by and for the capitalists. Therefore he does not hesitate to break them.

Inasmuch as the Socialists seek to transfer the goods of private persons to the community at large, they make the lot of all wage earners worse, because in abolishing the freedom to dispose of wages, they take away from them by this very act the hope and the opportunity of increasing their property and of securing advantages for themselves.

Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery.”

As Justice gives every Man a Title to the product of his honest industry, and the fair Acquisitions of his Ancestors descended to him; so Charity gives every Man a Title to so much out of another’s plenty, as will keep him from extreme want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise.

When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal.

…empire follows the balance of property, whether lodged in one, a few, or many hands.

We are unalterably opposed to any class government, whether it be the existing dictatorship of the plutocracy or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Both are essentially undemocratic and un-American. Both are destructive of private initiative liberty.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

I want them poor and they deserve to be poor. You can't have capitalism without punishment.

The worldview of the Left is a battle between rich and poor

Property is impossible.

Bear in mind that capitalism is a tiny period of human society. You never really had capitalism, you always had one or another variant of state capitalism.