"Socialist society can only come about by a revolution; if the masses, through general strikes and mass agitation, seize the means of production from their present owners.‘But doesn’t that involve violence? Surely you’re not prepared to use violence to achieve your political ends?’This cry is always flung in the face of revolutionaries, usually by people who are only too prepared to accept without complaint the recurring and brutalising violence of the class society in which we live. It comes from people who ignored or supported the orgy of destruction which the government of America launched for more than a full decade against the people of Vietnam; from people who offer sympathy and succour to the regime of the Shah of Persia, which is founded on the torture of dissenters; of from people who hardly raise a word of protest about the deep violence of tyrannical governments all over the world – from Thailand, to South Africa to South Korea; or from people who never turn a hair at the institutionalised violence of everyday life – of people being maimed and battered in factories and building sites through negligence and greed of employers; of old people tormented by hunger and cold."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 4
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Foot
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Paul Foot
Paul Foot (8 November 1937 – 18 July 2004) was an English journalist and socialist. He was the son of Lord Caradon and the nephew of Michael Foot.
17 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Paul Foot →
Related Quotes
"All the gifts which providence had showered on Jonathan Aitken were devoted to pimping for the billionaires from Riyadh."
"Marx argued that all human history was dominated by a tussle for the wealth between classes, one of which took the we…"
"Only the working masses can change society; but they will not do that spontaneously, on their own. They can rock capi…"
"Add to these anecdotes and quotations [[Andrew Neil|[Andrew] Neil]]'s writing style, which is dour and monotonous, th…"
"[On Foot's housemaster at Shrewsbury School (1952–1955)] Trench made his name as a great innovator, especially in cor…"
"I'd been impressed, too, more than I dared admit at the campaign by Tony Benn and his supporters. Why, I wonder? I'd …"
"Change does not just happen, and it certainly doesn't just come because one day Tony Benn might be prime minister at …"
"There appears to be a link between the enormity of a crime and the ignominy which attaches to any journalist or inves…"
"I am sorry to read in this book that Ian Botham is an 'independent Tory' and (worse) that he admires Mrs Thatcher. Bu…"
"Which is the more subversive: a group of senior people in the security services who are giving secrets to the enemy, …"