The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain. Émile Durkheim
No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred, by the accident of birth both from the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggled, the poor are not wrong in believing. Is it a necessary evil? They are told so by, those who do not feel it – by those who have gained the prizes in the lottery of life. But it was also said that slavery, that despotism, that all the privileges of oligarchy, were necessary. John Stuart Mill, On Socialism
The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society – we are on the eve of universal change. Eugene V Debs
In 1883 [William] Morris and Karl Marx’s sister and others get together and a year later Morris founds the Socialist League. James Burke, Connections s3e1: Feedback, BBC 1997
I’d rather live in a socialist Britain than one ruled by a lot of fucking foreigners. Alan Clark
Now the Great Socialist had been the boss of the Darkness for a decade at the time of this election. His party’s symbol, a pair of hands breaking through handcuffs – symbolizing the poor shaking off the rich – was imprinted in black stencils on the walls of every government office in the Darkness. Some of the customers at the tea shop said the Great Socialist started off as a good man. Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger p97
You see a total of ninety-three criminal cases – for murder, rape, grand larceny, gun-smuggling, pimping, and many other such minor offences – are pending against the Great Socialist and his ministers at the present time. ibid. p97
Now that the date for the elections has been set, and declared on radio, election fever had started spreading again. These are the three main diseases of this country, sir: typhoid, cholera, and election fever. This last one is the worst; it makes people talk and talk about things that they have no say in ... Would they do it this time? Would they beat the Great Socialist and win the elections? Had they raised enough money of their own, and bribed enough policemen, and bought enough fingerprints of their own, to win? Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh. ibid. p98
Whatever was being done, was being done for our own good. The Great Socialist’s enemies would try and steal the election from us, the poor, and take the power away from us, the poor, and put those shackles back on our hands that he, the Great Socialist, had so lovingly taken off our hands. Did we understand? ibid. p100
There you have it. That was the positive side of the Great Socialist. He humiliated all our masters – that’s why we kept voting him back in. ibid. p105
The Socialist – very much against his will – finds himself in the midst of this horrid battle, and he appeals to the other combatants to cease from fighting and establish a system of Brotherly Love and Mutual Helpfulness, but he does not hypocritically pretend to practise brotherly love towards those who will not agree to his appeal, and who compel him to fight with them for his very life. He knows that in this battle he must either fight or go under. Therefore, in self-defence, he fights; but all the time he continues to appeal for the cessation of the slaughter. He pleads for the changing of the system. He advocates Co-operation instead of Competition; but how can he co-operate with people who insist on competing with him? No individual can co-operate by himself! Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
‘We’ll give the bastards Socialism!’ shouted Crass, who was literally foaming at the mouth.’
‘We’ll teach ’em to come ’ere trying to undermined our bloody morality,’ howled Dick Wantley as he hurled a lump of granite that he had torn up from the macadamized road at one of the cyclists. ibid.
But directly one enquired what means they proposed in order to bring about the adoption of their plan, they replied that they hoped to do so by reasoning with the others! ibid.
No one who has been a Socialist can ever cease to be one. It is impossible for a man who has once acquired knowledge ever to relinquish it. A Socialist is one who understands the causes of the misery and degradation we see all around us. ibid.
Even if you no longer believe in working for Socialism, there’s no need to work against it … You might at least refrain from doing evil. ibid.
Just one thing perturbed me. The attractions of socialism were obvious, so why couldn’t everybody else see it? Surely everyone could see it was ridiculous to have one and a half million people unemployed, while there were countless valuable tasks which could be carried out. And we’d all be miles better off if everything was determined by human need rather than profits, wouldn’t we? Mark Steel, Reasons to be Cheerful
Becoming an active socialist in the late seventies was like arriving at the end of a brilliant party. I was arriving at the time others were leaving and garbing that I should have been there earlier. ‘You mean you weren’t here for the miners’ strike and dockers’ strike and bringing down the Tory government,’ old hands would say with sympathy. ibid.
In the 1970s Villa Road in South London was a squatted street. Behind these doors anarchists mixed with hippies and communists … This was a generation who wanted to change the world. Lefties I: Property is Theft, BBC 2006
They believed in collective living and collective action. ibid.
This rejection of the nuclear family was born of an intellectual analysis which saw the family as an essential unit of the capitalist society. ibid.
By the mid-70s there were about 5,000 squatters in Lambeth. ibid.
1976: under threat of eviction the squatters on Villa Road decided to defend the houses by barricading themselves in. They were now living behind their own iron curtain in a state of siege. ibid.
‘We had plenty to be angry about; we still do.’ Lefties II: Angry Wimmin
In the late ’70s politics in Britain became more extreme. As the state moved dramatically to the right, the left began to fragment. The women’s movement was already an established political force. ibid.
The Revolutionary Feminists advocated what they called political lesbianism. ibid.
As well as marching there were other forms of direct action like defacing sexist posters. ibid.
‘We were not successful … It’s extraordinary we achieved what we did.’ ibid.
By the mid ’80s the Left in Britain was on its knees. Thatcher was riding high having swept to power for a second term. The miners had been defeated after a year-long strike. Lefties III: A Lot of Balls
Faced with a tabloid press as right-wing as the government committed left-wingers began to wonder whether they could rally support for their cause if only they could publish their own newspaper. ibid.
The News on Sunday was the extreme left’s first attempt to enter mainstream public life. ibid.
One of the most high-profile and violent industrial disputes of the mid ’80s was Wapping. Rupert Murdoch had sacked 5,000 of his workers and moved production of the The Sun, The Times & The Sunday Times to a new high-tech plant in Wapping, East London. ibid.
Having walked out, Pilger went public and penned a series of articles attacking the paper. ibid.
‘It wasn’t even left-wing: that was the betrayal.’ ibid. Pilger
In the absence of a big topical story the paper led with an article about a man in Brazil who was selling his kidney. ibid.
‘Unexciting and pretty bland.’ ibid. employee
From a young age we’re taught fidelity to the system and to the state … In almost every industrialised country in the world socialist parties have huge representations … but in America everyone knows that being called a socialist or a communist carried an immediate negative connotation. Abby Martin: The Empire Files: America’s Unofficial Religion: The War on an Idea, Youtube 2015
In the late 1800s there was an intense battle between organised labor and the country’s industrial capitalists. ibid.
It’s been a real battle with real weapons. ibid.
Repression … was reinforced by hired gangs and lynch-mobs. ibid.
But with the new law every single union officer was required to sign an affidavit pledging that they did not believe in socialism. If you did not sign, you lost your job. ibid.
Under the Smith Act it was deemed illegal for anyone to be a member of the communist party. ibid.
The old guard will use every weapon in its arsenal. ibid.