political theory quotes

Well, Marx is having a comeback. I hear him mentioned a lot in terms of the global financial situation and the general sense of injustice out there. A lot of economic experts in America refer to him without actually using the M word, but he’s around.

I like Gramsci. He’s an important person.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.

Marx and Engels never talked about murdering the bourgeois. According to the old bourgeois concept, the judges were the ones who judged, and the executioners were the ones who executed.

In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.