Slave State
“The best of the ‘Socialist Liberals’ are leading us inthe direction of the slave state only because they have the idea of a fixed destination, and don’t know where else to find it.”
~ Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
Monopoly on Armed Force
“The state occupies a special position in society because it has a monopoly on armed force, but that only makes it more vital that it should not be sacrosanct. Not only must the power of the government be limited by law if the citizens are to be free, but it must be limited by other powers. It must be regarded as but one of those social forces upon whose equilibrium a free society depends.”
~ Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
Monopoly on Armed Force Read More »
Social Welfare
“Yearning to do good and obsessed by the power of the state to do it, relieved by this power of their age-old feeling of futility, they are destroying, in the name of social welfare, the foundations of freedom.”
~ Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
Social Equilibrium
“Detached idealists of freedom should regard themselves as a mobile force in defense of the social equilibrium. Their aim at all times should be to prevent the domination of society by any one organized idea or power.”
~Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
Social Equilibrium Read More »
State Religion
“Any state religion, as all the great liberals have pointed out, is death to human freedom.”
~Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
Valid Knowledge
“Science regards all valid knowledge as derived ultimately from experience, derived by the methods of observation, experiment, and rational calculation, and subject to the practical test of action.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science?, Part 5, Marx’s Effort to be Scientific, What Science Is
Who Was Socialist?
“Do not forget that Stalin was a socialist. Mussolini was a socialist. Hundreds of thousands of the followers of Hitler were socialists or communists, converted overnight by the lure of ‘decisive political action’, and by a small redefinition – a small sacrifice of what is ‘Romantic’ – in the principle of human freedom.”
~Max Eastman
New International, Vol.4 No.8, August 1938
Who Was Socialist? Read More »
The Struggle is Still for Freedom
“The struggle is still for freedom; the main facts are still economic; the arch-enemy is still the soft-headed idealist who refuses to face facts.”
~Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
The Struggle is Still for Freedom Read More »