Hannah Arendt Quotes
Our problem today is not how to expropriate the expropriators but, rather, how to arrange matters so that the masses, dispossessed by industrial society in capitalist and socialist systems, can regain property. For this reason alone, the alternative between capitalism and socialism is false-not only because neither exists anywhere in its pure state anyhow, but because we have here twins, each wearing different hats.
Arendt, Hannah. Crises of the Republic. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972, p. 214.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. Ironically, during the McCarthy period and the Red Scare of the 1950s, some of the right wingers charged that Mark Twain’s writing was “Communist Propaganda”. Most of the accusers had never read most of Train’s work. At the time, the Communists had condemned the racial segregation that was then legal in America and most of the staunch Southern segregationists accused anyone who attacked segregation as a communist. Twain was one of the leading voices against American racism. As for communism, the accusers of Train had probably never read this particular quotation. Twain was an early severe critic of communism and used his favorite weapon—humor—to attack it.
The socialist extremists wanted the state to own all the major businesses which would be operated without a profit allowing more money to be paid to the workers without any price increase for the consumer. Yet, many of them wanted the innovation and other virtues of the private sector and few were ready to take on the political chaos that would be involved in eliminating private ownership of businesses. Crosland forced them to logically accept the concept of profits as desirable for the society.
Ardent socialists make the same complaint—that critics often compare realistic socialist societies with capitalist utopias, and they conclude when reality is considered, socialism is the better system.
From his WSJ opinion letter commenting on the WSJ article “In Defense of Scrooge, Whose Thrift Blessed the World”.
Hannah Arendt was a German-born American political theorist. Her many books and articles have had a lasting influence on political theory and philosophy. Arendt is widely considered one of the most important political thinkers of the 20th century.
