Tyranny - Max Eastman

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

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Social Welfare

Socialism, Freedom, Government, Tyranny

“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

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State Planned Economy

Economics, Government, Marxism, Socialism, Tyranny

“We must arm our minds now against the less obvious, the more strong and plausible and patriotic enemies of freedom, the advocates of a state planned economy.”

~ Max Eastman

Reflections on the Failure of Socialism

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Revolutionary Dictatorship

Marxism, Capitalism, Communism, Dialectic, Revolution, Tyranny

“The Marxist method is to accentuate the class struggle between workers and capitalists, organize it both nationally and internationally, and carry it forward…in full consciousness of the ruthlessness of the forces at play, to the goal of a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

~Max Eastman

Marxism, Is it Science? The Practical Hypothesis in Marxism

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Officialdom Gone Mad

Socialism, Communism, Economics, Marxism, Tyranny

“Officialdom gone mad, officialdom erected into a new and merciless exploiting class; the largest peace-time standing army in the world; the people universally disarmed; the functions of control and superintendence gripped in the fist of a ruling clique which, when needful, wages armed war on the people.”

~Max Eastman

Reflections on the Failure of Socialism

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Russian Revolution

Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Revolution, Tyranny

“The Russian revolution is perhaps the greatest tragedy in human history, terrible in the breadth of its impact, terrible in the depth of its significance, terrible in its personal details.”

~Max Eastman

Stalin’s Russia and the Crisis in Socialism

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Chinese Communists

Tyranny, Communism, Revolution, Totalitarian

“Chinese Communists were hand-in-glove with Stalin in his plan to seize Manchuria, and then all China, and then all Asia, and then the world, for the totalitarian revolution.”

~Max Eastman

Reflections on the Failure of Socialism

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Bureaucratic Socializers

Socialism, Democracy, Economics, Revolution, Tyranny

“It is the bureaucratic socializers—if I may devise that label for the champions of a lawyer-manager-politician-intellectual revolution—who constitute a real and subtle threat to America’s democracy.”

~Max Eastman

Reflections on the Failure of Socialism

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Lenin’s Methods

Marxism, Communism, Totalitarian, Tyranny

“I still regarded Stalin’s totalitarian dictatorship as an enemy, rather than a result, of the policies of Lenin. It took me another two years to arrive at the knowledge that Lenin’s methods—or in other words bolshevik Marxism—were to blame.”

~Max Eastman

Reflections on the Failure of Socialism

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Pariah

Religion, Communism, Tyranny

“When I came home from Europe in 1927 most of my old political friends refused to speak to me on the street. I was a traitor, a renegade, a pariah, a veritable untouchable, so far as the communists were concerned.”

~Max Eastman

Reflections on the Failure of Socialism

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