"What socialism needs for success is, in his view, this: a ruling class, secure in tenure, able and accustomed to command a deferential working class accustomed to obey; the pushers and the pushed around, all arranged in a hierarchical society. Socialism further needs, according to him, stable and respected institutions through which commands can flow from top to bottom; a vigorous patriotism and sense of national purpose. It needs discipline, subordination, a well-defined class structure, leadership, even tradition and continuity. What socialism needs for success, in other words, is to become Tory, to strive to preserve or recreate a distinctively Tory society. Is this ludicrous? Not really at all. In Imperial Germany, so much admired by our early bureaucratic Fabians, something like what he advocates actually existed; nor is our own history by any means devoid of Tory socialists and socialist Tories, united alike by concern for the poor and contempt for free market liberalism."
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People from LondonConservatives from the United KingdomJournalists from EnglandEditors from EnglandColumnists from England
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Peregrine Worsthorne
Sir Peregrine Gerard Worsthorne (22 December 1923 – 4 October 2020) was a British journalist, writer, and broadcaster. He spent the largest part of his career at the Telegraph newspaper titles, eventually the editor of The Sunday Telegraph from 1986 to 1989. He left the newspaper in 1997.
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