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
The Totalitarian State
“It (socialism) survived long enough to show what was in it: tyranny, namely, and that new perfection of tyranny, the totalitarian state.”
~Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
The Totalitarian State Read More »
Thoroughgoing Socialism
“Either phony elections or no elections at all—that is what thoroughgoing socialism will mean, no matter who brings it in—hard-headed Bolsheviks, soft-headed Social Democrats, or genteel liberals.”
~Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
Thoroughgoing Socialism Read More »
Phony Elections
“The phony elections in totalitarian countries, the ballots with only one party and one list of candidates, are not the mere tricks of a cynical dictator—they are intrinsic to a state-planned economy.”
~Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
Animal Egoisms
“The crude animal egoisms of men and classes of men thus grab ideas and use them, not as heroic lights to action, but as blinds to hide inaction or actions that are too base.”
~Max Eastman
The End of Socialism in Russia
On Karl Marx
“If he (Karl Marx) ever performed a generous act, it is not to be found in the record. He was a totally undisciplined, vain, slovenly, and egotistical spoiled child. He was ready at the drop of a hat with spiteful hate. He could be devious, disloyal, snobbish, anti-Semitic, anti-Negro. He was by habit a sponge, an intriguer, a tyrannical bigot who would rather wreck his party than see it succeed under another leader.”
~Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
Bureaucratism
“The chief enemy of the effort to make society more free and equal through any kind of organization is bureaucratism.”
~Max Eastman
Marxism, Is it Science? Part 6, Revolution as a Scientific Enterprise, Merits of the Scientific Attitude
Socialist Dogma
“The separation of church and state is one of the main measures of protection against tyranny. But the Marxian religion makes this separation impossible, for its creed is politics; its church is the state. There is no hope within its dogmas of any evolution toward the free society it promises.”
~Max Eastman
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism
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 »
Yearning for Dependence
“I have learned from Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy how much infantile and primitive savage yearning for dependence, for external authority, for the sovereign-father, there is in the average human heart.”
~Max Eastman
Stalin’s Russia and the Crisis in Socialism
Yearning for Dependence Read More »