Anthony Crosland Quotes

Socialism's not a word that I use. I say 'social democracy' because I don't think the government needs to own all the means of production.

If you want government to take everything, if you want government to take more and more over with the banks, more of the industries, all of a sudden you're going to have a government auto czar, right there, right down the line, that's socialism.

No less than 50 percent of the means of production must be in the hands of the state.

That’s right Clement. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it.

A due regard for individual property rights does not preclude assigning the state its share in national resources.

Economics and politics are so intertwined and interlinked that politics now, mainstream politics, extreme center politics, are little else but a version of concentrated economics. And this means that any alternative - alternative capitalism, left Keynesianism, intervention by the state to help the poor, rolling back the privatizations - becomes a huge issue. The entire weight of the extreme center and its media is turned against it, which in reality now is beginning to harm democracy.

A recent poll showed that nearly half the American public believes that the government should redistribute wealth. That so many people are so willing to blithely put such an enormous and dangerous arbitrary power in the hands of politicians – risking their own freedom, in hopes of getting what someone else has – is a painful sign of how far many citizens and voters fall short of what is needed to preserve a democratic republic

Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist.

The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of everyone else's money.

I nationalize strategic companies and get criticized, but when Bush does it, it's OK. ... Bush is turning socialist. How are you, comrade Bush?

A substantial extension of public ownership is an essential pre-requisite of greater equality of earned income

Socialism has been preached for so long, the British people no longer have any sense of personal responsibility.

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them.

Most countries choose to have government run the economy.

If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production"--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country.

Socialism and communism are set up so that a select few elite get most of everything and the rest of society is equally miserable in poverty and oppression. So if you can be in the ruling party elite, socialism, communism, you've got it made. That's less than one half of one-tenth a percent of the population in those countries.

While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

If a socialist economy is opened up to increasing degrees of market forces, a point will be reached at which democratic governance becomes a possibility.

They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy-just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it.

There was a hope then by some people that what we call trickle-down economics would work. That if you made the economy pie bigger, everybody would benefit. Twenty-five years after NAFTA, we know that that is not true. We should have known then that it was not true.

It has been a long fight to put the control of our economic system in the hands of the government.

State ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism - if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials - but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.

The Federal Reserve and Congress have systematically taught the American people to trust the government and that caution in spending is harmful to the economy.

There are two economic realities in America today. There's been a record six straight years of job growth, and new census numbers show incomes have increased at a record rate after years of stagnation. However, income inequality remains significant, and nearly half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

Americans are sick of the idea of the government taking over everything and trying to run it. We don't know how to run a bank, a car company.