Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Socialist movements risk error from misreading texts and from opportunists using helplessness for personal gain.
- In plain terms
- Socialism fails when people misunderstand ideas or pretend to help the weak to gain power.
- What can you take from it?
- Ideologies fail when followers are confused or self-serving.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How do you know an ideology is sound?
- Who benefits from your causes?
Another view
This critique may ignore structural failures independent of individual intent.
More from Jose Marti
We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spi…
Permalink to quote #66 The vote is the most effective and merciful instrument that man has devised to manage his affairs.
Permalink to quote #68 Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all.
Permalink to quote #65
Related quotes
If there are certain pages of Mr Bertrand Russell's book, Power, which seem rather empty, that is merely to say that we have now sunk to a depth at which the r…
George OrwellGeorge Orwell quote #5 Deconstruction ... insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.
Terry EagletonTerry Eagleton quote #1 If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in thei…
Howard ZinnHoward Zinn quote #1