“socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of greed”

[martasfic]

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

I’m interested what people make of this quote by Winston Churchill:

I don’t consider myself a communitarian, not a socialist. That means I’m not allergic to the idea of private property. I think people who work hard deserve to profit from their work, and I’m not that opposed to the idea that some people just lucked out and were born with potential society wants to reward (or were born into families that had the resources to encourage said potential). To an extent, I’m okay with that. I definitely think that by living in a certain society I take up certain obligations to look after my other community-members, and it’s wrong for me to indulge in luxury while the guy who delivers my pizza can’t even afford healthcare or whatever. But that doesn’t mean you have to go whole-hog socialist. It just means you recognize you have certain obligations you have to meet, just like you have to pay for the roads you drive on.

But even so, I find these thoughts… interesting. Socialism may come out of a certain ignorance about human nature, I’ll give you that, but the gospel of envy? As I understand it, it’s not about being jealous of the rich – it’s about recognizing that private property encourages some of the nastier quirks of our psychology. I don’t find socialism per se particularly immoral or anything, and on a small scale I can even see it working. It’s the whole national project where things break down.

I’m more interested in what other people make of this quote, though. Do you agree? Does it surprise you that Winston Churchill would say this? (Given the times, I can see him having no love of socialism.) Do you know any more of the context than I do?

(P.S. – I know I owe comments to people. I haven’t forgotten. I’ve got some time this afternoon when I plan on doing that.)

Comments

*sigh*

[dwimordene-2011.livejournal.com]

Your definition of private property is the definition of personal property. Marxist understandings of private property = ownership for private interest of the products that are the means of producing profit and, on a practical level, the vast majority of the wealth of the nation. This reaction is as old as the Communist Manifesto - in fact, it's older, because the CM actually takes it on and responds to it.

As for the quotation, it in no way surprises me Churchill says this; he is the author of the "Iron Curtain" metaphor, and a major propagandist for western capitalism. He was the head of the Conservative Party in Britain - pro-empire, pro-capitalist, anti-labor, pro-free market ideology.

Socialism may come out of a certain ignorance about human nature

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to say something here. In my experience, people who say this haven't considered seriously the critique of human nature leveled by Marx and Marxian theorists, which is a critique against philosophical notions that simply reify the dominant behavior of people without looking at what promotes and causes those behaviors to be dominant. For a socialist who wasn't sidetracked by Fourier, St. Simon, or anarchism, it's not a question of eliminating evil in the hearts of men and remaking human nature absolutely, but of determining what causes the potential in all of us for massively anti-social behavior to become a dominant force in society. There will of course always be people who are morally bankrupt; that potential always exists, but even four hundred morally bankrupt people, the number of people who currently own as much wealth as half the planet - literally - if they are not in control of production and distribution are not going to be able to have such a significant impact on society as they do when they have power thanks to money.

That's the socialist bet.