Bertrand Russell

“ I do not think that mere inequality of wealth, in itself, is a very grave evil. If everybody had enough, the fact that some have more than enough would be unimportant. With a very moderate improvement in methods of production, it would be easy to ensure that everybody should have enough, even under capitalism, if wars and preparations for wars were abolished. ”

“ In war and in commercial competition, it is necessary to control individual impulses, to treat men as so many "bayonets" or "sabres" or "hands," not as a society of separate people with separate tastes and capacities. Some sacrifice of individual impulses is, of course, essential to the existence of an ordered community, and this degree of sacrifice is, as a rule, not regretable even from the individual's point of view. But what is demanded in a highly militarized or industrialized nation goes far beyond this very moderate degree. ”

“ It requires vigour on the part of those who are acquiring power, without a too desperate resistance on the part of those whose share is diminishing. This is only possible if those who are acquiring power are not very fierce, and do not terrify their opponents by threats of ruin and death. It cannot be done quickly, because quick methods require that very mechanism and subordination of the individual which we should struggle to prevent.
But even equalization of power is not the whole of what is needed politically. ”

“ To cure this evil is not easy, because efficiency is promoted, at any given moment, though not in the long run, by sacrificing the individual to the smooth working of a vast organization, whether military or industrial. ”

“ The graver evils of the capitalist system all arise from its uneven distribution of power. The possessors of capital wield an influence quite out of proportion to their numbers or their services to the community. ”

“ The right grouping of men for different purposes is also essential. Self-government in industry, for example, is an indispensable condition of a good society. Those acts of an individual or a group which have no very great importance for outsiders ought to be freely decided by that individual or group. This is recognized as regards religion, but ought to be recognized over a much wider field.
Bolshevik theory seems to me to err by concentrating its attention upon one evil, namely inequality of wealth, which it believes to be at the bottom of all others. ”

“ Good relations between individuals, freedom from hatred and violence and oppression, genera diffusion of education, leisure rationally employed, the progress of art and science--these seem to me among the most important ends that a political theory ought to have in view. ”

“ For these reasons, equalization of wealth without equalization of power seems to me a rather small and unstable achievement. But equalization of power is not a thing that can be achieved in a day. It requires a considerable level of moral, intellectual, and technical education. It requires a long period without extreme crises, in order that habits of tolerance and good nature may become common. ”

“ A society which is to allow much freedom to the individual must be strong enough to be not anxious about home defence, moderate enough to refrain from difficult external conquests, and rich enough to value leisure and a civilized existence more than an increase of consumable commodities.
But where the material conditions for such a state of affairs exist, the psychological conditions are not likely to exist unless power is very widely diffused throughout the community. ”

“ Where power is concentrated in a few, it will happen, unless those few are very exceptional people, that they will value tangible achievements in the way of increase in trade or empire more than the slow and less obvious improvements that would result from better education combined with more leisure. ”

“ My first impulse was to abandon political thinking as a bad job, and to conclude that the strong and ruthless must always exploit the weaker and kindlier sections of the population. But this is not an attitude that can be long maintained by any vigorous and temperamentally hopeful person. ”

“ And in every country in such a condition we may expect to find the government falling into the hands of ruthless men, who have not by nature any love for freedom, and who will see little importance in hastening the transition from dictatorship to freedom. ”

“ If, as I have argued, the method of violent revolution and Communist rule is not likely to have the results which idealists desire, we are reduced to despair unless we call see hope in other methods. The Bolshevik arguments against all other methods are powerful. ”

“ But the truth in social questions is not quite like truth in physiology or physics, since it depends upon men's beliefs. Optimism tends to verify itself by making people impatient of avoidable evils; while despair, on the other hand, makes the world as bad as it believes it to be. ”

“ They control almost the whole of education and the press; they decide what the average man shall know or not know; the cinema has given them a new method of propaganda, by which they enlist the support of those who are too frivolous even for illustrated papers. ”

“ Some people believe that by living on sour milk one can achieve immortality. Such optimists are answered by a mere refutation; it is not necessary to go on and point out some other way of escaping death. ”

“ It is far more likely that such men will be tempted to embark upon new enterprises, requiring further concentration of forces, and postponing indefinitely the liberation of the populations which they use as their material. ”