"The Webbs explicitly rejected the 'naive belief that. . . Soviet] penal settlements are now maintained and continuously supplied with thousands of deported manual workers and technicians, deliberately for the purpose of making, out of this forced labour, a net pecuniary profit to add to the State revenue.' Such notions were simply 'incredible' to 'anyone acquainted with the economic results of the chain-gang, or of prison labour, in any country in the world'. Slavery always has its apologists, but seldom are they so ingenuous. The thirty-six Soviet writers who, under Gorky's direction, produced the hyperbolic book The Belomor-Baltic Canal Named for Stalin at least had the excuse that the alternative to lying might be dying. The Webbs wrote their rubbish in the safety of Bloomsbury."
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SocialistsEconomists from EnglandLabour Party (UK) politiciansSociologists from EnglandSecretaries of State for the Colonies (United Kingdom)
Original Language: English
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Sources
Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 209
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sidney_Webb%2C_1st_Baron_Passfield
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Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield
Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield (13 July 1859 – 13 October 1947) was a British socialist, economist, reformer and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. He was one of the early members of the Fabian Society. With his wife, Beatrice, he formed a working partnership; the Webbs are often linked together.
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