Democratic Socialists

"Power to the people."

"Dubcek, the bureaucrat with a pleasant smile, was a confusing blend of contradictions. He spent his entire career as the cog in a totalitarian machine and then, when he emerged on top, declared himself a democrat. He was a pragmatist and a dreamer. He could be a skilled maneuverer in the baroque labyrinth of communist politics. But in the end even he admitted that he could be incredibly naïve."

"Each leader has the privilege of choosing the way he will leave [the political scene], [...] Andreas Papandreou chose to deny reality."

"Time for "Change" has come."

"I'm grateful to no one about anything."

"What has made this whole process so special is that above all - especially in terms of the pace of change – it has been determined by the creative and spontaneous activity of the broad mass of the people, with the communists in the vanguard. In this spirit and in accord with the plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, people have acted without the slightest manipulation and without being given commands from above. The role of the party is to recognize people’s understanding, to raise it to a higher plane, to support progressive thinking and acts."

"There are no institutions – only the people rule this country."

"With the wall breached, everything was possible. On November 10th, Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria's ruler since 1954, announced that he was stepping down; soon the Bulgarian Communist Party was negotiating with the opposition and promising free elections. On November 17th, demonstrations broke out in Prague and quickly spread throughout Czechoslovakia. Within weeks, a coalition government had ousted the communists, and by the end of the year Alexander Dubcek, who had presided over the 1968 "Prague spring," was installed as chairman of the national assembly, reporting to the new president of Czechoslovakia—Václav Havel."

"My problem was not having a crystal ball to foresee the Russian invasion. At no point between January and August 20, in fact, did I believe that it would happen."

"National Independence, Popular Sovereignty, Social Liberation, Democratic Process."

"[Brexit is] the first instance that I can think of in living memory of a government pursuing a policy that they know is going to make our economy smaller and reduce people's livelihoods and life chances and I cannot understand why we in Labour would support that."

"[Leaving the EU is] the biggest economic crisis that our country will have faced for many, many generations."

"If we insist on leaving the EU then there is realistically only one way to honour our obligations under the Good Friday Agreement and that is to remain members of both the customs union and the single market"

"It's obvious that things are changing. When I was in high school and told people I was a socialist, they looked at me as if I were crazy. When I tell people I'm a socialist today, they just nod and go about their day - not a hint of revulsion."

"Any social democrat, no matter their intentions, will always find it easier to move to the right than to the left. ON one side lie guarantees of stability from powerful interests, on the other capital strikes and stubborn resistance."

"In memoriam, 1891-1936, Floyd Bjornstjerne Olson, twenty-second governor of the State of Minnesota. Born in near poverty, schooled in adversity, intimate with hunger and want. Out of this crucible came pioneer leadership with purposeful direction and the indomitable courage to seek new frontiers of economic security for the underprivileged. To that which he wrought an enduring memorial is builded in the hearts of his people."

"He recognized that for unnumbered centuries the human race lived in a world which could not produce enough food and shelter to provide for the human family. It was an age when progress was advanced by individual explorers constantly in search of new lands, new inventions, and new methods for increasing our material resources. It was a period when the common welfare was promoted by individualistic activity. Within Governor Olson's generation all of this untold individual effort produced the machine age and mass production. The human family for the first time in its history lived in a world that could produce more than enough for all. Floyd Olson understood this basic change from an age of scarcity to an age of plenty. He understood that the social usefulness of selfish individualism was ended. He saw that there must be a new spirit of cooperation if this great power of production were to serve the common welfare. Floyd Olson and the movement of which he was the leader alined themselves with this great current of change—a change going on throughout the world. He supplied the function of leadership by giving constructive direction to the force of change in the period in which he lived."

"I cite you the fact that this movement sponsored and brought about the passage of the first compulsory old-age pension law; that this movement has always stood upon the principle of taxation based upon ability to pay. I cite you the fact that despite years of struggle in this State to bring about the passage of an income-tax law—it was not until the Farmer-Labor movement gained control of the executive branch of the government and the Farmer-Labor movement enlisted the aid of popular opinion and public sentiment—not until then, despite all those years of struggle—was there an income-tax law in the State of Minnesota."

"Floyd Olson died on the threshold to greater things. A seat in the United States Senate was just a step away. The Presidency of the United States was a possibility. In the event that he had achieved either, history would have recorded him, we believe, as among the great Americans. The idealistic policies he advanced will be accepted as commonplace in the next 10 years. The cause of progress and liberalism has received a heavy blow in his death. There are other leaders, perhaps, who saw as he saw. There are advanced thinkers, no doubt, who carry on from the point where Floyd Olson, because of his tragic death, left off. We know of none, however, who has the Olson combination of brains, humanity, personality, and energy—a combination necessary to the accomplishment of radical and essential changes in a society shown, during the past generation, to be sadly out of gear."

"Never has the Republican party, both nationally and locally, been quite so low in morale and so bankrupt in ideas as today. It has stood like a man dazed, watching the parade go by, and not knowing what it is all about."

"The unorganized worker owes a debt of gratitude to his organized brother. If his living standard has not been beaten down to the level of the Russian peasant of the Czarist days, it is due to the demands the organized worker has been able to enforce. The former has benefited from the struggles and sacrifices of the latter."

"Our ultimate goal is a cooperative commonwealth wherein Government will stifle, as much as possible, the greed and avarice of the private profit system and will bring about more equitable distribution of the wealth produced by the hands and minds of the people."

"He was entering the national political picture for the first time, pleading eloquently for a national Farmer-Labor Party. There were little lines around his eyes that afternoon and he looked older somehow. He spoke effectively in the evening, but without the thunder and lightning that used to bring the most bitten audiences of independent farmers to their feet as a single man. After the meeting a few of us took him to a late show, trying to cheer him up, he looked so tired. At the table there, or dancing, he was conspicuous. People didn't know who he was but they sensed that he was "somebody." For even then with fatal sickness creeping over him, he radiated a graceful power, a magnetic fellowship that was irresistible. There were no tables when we came in—but the waiter took a look at Floyd and found one. He looked about him slowly, obviously a stranger here, yet at home. And people who saw him that night must have wished, as we were wishing, that they could see him again soon. Unlike us, though, they could not have been aware that this was but a breath-taking before an important engagement, a rest after a very minor skirmish, another pause before a battle in which he was bound to play a leading, if not decisive, role. And today that battle is nearer than before. The forces are gathering, now deflected by the false prophets, now rallied, now re-assembling where the rank and file sense the worthiness of the issue and a glorious outcome; still unprepared, now confident, now hesitating, ready. But Floyd Olson is dead."

"I am making a last appeal to the Legislature. If the Senate does not make provision for the sufferers in the State and the Federal Government refuses to aid, I shall invoke the powers I hold and shall declare martial law. [...] A lot of people who are now fighting [relief] measures because they happen to possess considerable wealth will be brought in by provost guard and be obliged to give up more than they would now. There is not going to be misery in this State if I can humanly prevent it. [...] Unless the Federal and State governments act to insure against recurrence of the present situation, I hope the present system of government goes right down to hell."

"If I were asked to name the greatest tragedy that has followed in the wake of the depression, I would say that it has been the destructive effect upon the morale of our youth. If I were asked to name the chief victim of the present heartless order I would not hesitate to say "youth.""

"At his funeral, tens of thousands gathered for the services in the Minneapolis Auditorium—the largest and most impressive funeral which Minnesota had ever given a man in either public or private life. Two hundred thousand people lined the streets and followed the hearse to the grave. The rich and poor alike gathered—the poor to pay their last tribute to their friend and champion; the rich to pay their respects to a man who played the game hard but fair. A great American had passed on. Thus fate snatched this leader of the common people as he was about to ascend the threshold to carry on the battle for them on the national scene."

"Today we are endeavoring to save the system we call Capitalism, by attempting to curb selfish individualism, and the avaricious profit motive. [...] That there will be anything left of the so-called Capitalistic system, when the ultimate changes take place, is very doubtful, that there will be great change is certain."

"People who were active in the movement during the 30s invariably have their favorite Olson stories to tell. One of the most revealing is a tale told by Jimmy Flowers. Flowers was an organizer for the United Farmers League during this period and an active member of the Communist Party. One day he dropped into Olson's office to dish out some hell about farm conditions in rural Minnesota. Olson's schedule was filled up pretty tight for the day, so he suggested that the two of them meet at 5:30 and drive to his home and spend the evening together. The first thing Jimmy did on reaching the Governor's home was take a hot bath (a rare luxury for a travelling farm organizer), and then he joined Olson and some other guests Floyd had invited over for the occasion. Not all of them were "good Farmer-Laborites" by any means. A few hours later, the influentials departed, and Floyd asked Jimmy what he thought. Well, Jimmy didn't think much of the affair, and he said so in his usually blunt way. He doubted the sincerity of the Governor's friends when it came to helping the farmers. Olson was equally blunt. He walked over to his bookshelf, pulled out a volume of Lenin's Collected Works, and turned to an essay called Left Wing Communism and Infantile Disorder. "You lousy Commie son of a bitch," said Olson (with more good nature than anger), "You're standing here talking to me about revolution, and you haven't even got the workers and farmers organized. That has to come first, and then we can move ahead ...." The story is indicative of the Olson approach. Floyd Olson was a practical politician with a genuine dedication to the people. He didn't believe in advancing policies they would refuse to accept. He realized that the degree of change possible was dependent not simply on a governor's decrees, or high sounding platforms, but the level of militancy and political understanding of the people themselves. He would move left as the people moved left. He would articulate that leftward progress, even encourage it, but never at the price of endangering the Farmer-Labor Movement in the process."

"I'm sure he would have been president."

"A nation cannot be preserved which does not preserve its citizens. Industry is retrenching, reducing wages, lowering the standard of living, destroying buying power, and throwing more and more men and women on the streets to shift for themselves. Just how that is going to solve our economic problems is beyond understanding."

"The freedom of speech and the press should remain inviolate and any law which constitutes an entering wedge into that inviolability is unsafe."

"We are assembled during the most crucial period in the history of our State and of our Nation. An army of unemployed, some 200,000 homeless and wandering boys, thousands of abandoned farms, an ever-increasing number of mortgage foreclosures, and thousands of people in want and poverty are evidences not only of an economic depression but of the failure of government and of our social system to function in the interest of the common happiness of the people."

"The Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota maintains that the present economic order is in need of very serious alterations—that to continue it as it now is constituted is criminal folly and stupidity. We charge that it fails utterly to meet the needs of our people; that the massive load of misery and suffering which we witness all about us is due to its inherent defects. Just why people are so reluctant to make changes in government—changes for the betterment—is somewhat puzzling. Certainly we cannot hope to solve our problems by continuing the very methods responsible for creating them. In almost every other field, we are prepared to take advantage of new ideas, of new improvements. In government, however, we become confused and frightened in the presence of suggested changes. Perhaps the reason for this can be found in the fact that almost from infancy we are taught, by the rankest kind of sophistry, that it is un-American to make changes in government. We are taught that persons who suggest changes are radicals, and that a radical is an arch enemy of society, a wild destructionist, a bomb thrower, an assaulter of women. The result has been a perversion of the public mind to an where the people fear their very birth-right,—independence of action—and self-determination. We believe in something that has not been tried as yet. We believe in restoring prosperity by restoring the purchasing power of the man at the bottom. Unless labor can receive wage to buy the farmers produce, the farmer can never be prosperous. Unless the farmer has cash to buy the goods that the laborer manufactures, the city worker can never be prosperous."

"This has got me. Don't worry; it must be all for the best."

"It is the Republicans who have given us government that has been both corrupt and extravagant; aided the tax dodger and transferred his load to the taxpayer — you and me; made every function of state and national government subservient to the powerful special interests, and now they are shedding crocodile tears for the poor taxpayer."

"Now I am frank to say that I am not a liberal. I enjoy working on a common basis with liberals for their platforms, but I am not a liberal. I am what I want to be—I am a radical. I am a radical in the sense that I want a definite change in the system. I am not satisfied with tinkering, I am not satisfied with patching, I am not satisfied with hanging a laurel wreath upon burglars and thieves and pirates and calling them code authorities or something else. I am not satisfied with that. I want, however, an orderly, a sane, and a constructive change. I don't want any visionary things any more than the hardest Tory or Conservative wants them. But I know the transition can take place and that, of course, it must be gradual. It can't come overnight, but I want to do all I can to set it in motion and keep it going steady, not in jerks, or jumps, or in spurts, but going steadily ahead ...."

"Should not the government own all those industries which have to do with the obtaining of raw materials and transforming them into necessary products [...] mines, packing plants, grain elevators, oil fields, and iron mines? [...] I am speaking of these things as merely touching upon the ideals of this movement, of an ultimate cooperative commonwealth...."

"I look back at my three terms as Governor with one great regret. I did not have, on any occasion, a majority of the members of the legislature who agreed with the principles of this movement. To have had that, I say from my very heart—to have had that in any one session—would have been sufficient gratification so that I would have been willing thereafter to retire from public life."

"Whose liberty? Liberty for what purpose? Liberty of the Citizens' Alliance to arm thugs to shoot defenseless strikers in the back? Liberty of promoters of spurious stocks to fleece widows and orphans? Liberty of millionaires to escape taxation? Liberty to make slaves of workers and serfs of farmers? These are the individual liberties that these people mean."

"Whoever says that a man can live the Christian life, while at the same time successfully participating in the present order of things, is either profound in the lack of knowledge, or else he deliberately lies."

"It is only the densest ethical ignorance that talks about a "Christian business" life; for business is now intrinsically evil."

"There are no honest goods to buy or to sell; adulterated foods, shoddy manufacture of all that we wear, the underpaid labor and consumed life that make every garment a texture of falsehood, the hideous competitive war that slays its millions where swords and cannons slay their tens, all unite to baffle and mock the efforts of the awakened conscience at every turn, and make the industrial system seem like the triumph of hell and madness on the earth. Only by a sort of terrible daily denial of his spiritual self, a crucifixion of the principles by which he longs to organize his life, can a man wrest a stained and insecure livelihood from this terrible war for bread which we call industry."

"Whatever I do, whichever way I turn, I can neither feed nor clothe my family, nor take part in public affairs as a citizen, nor speak the truth as I conceive it, without being stained with the blood of my brothers and sisters; without putting my hands into the wickedness that prostitutes every sacred national and religious function."

"I can no longer clothe myself, whether in good clothes or cheap, without the likelihood that my clothes are made under sweat-shop conditions. ... If I send my students to pursue further study upon subjects to which I have introduced them, I must send them to receive the benefits of endowments from the hands of a besotted philanthropy, drunken and sated with the wine of life pressed from the crushed and exhausted millions who feed the modern industrial wine press."

"The economic system denies the right of the sincerest and most sympathetic to keep their hands out of the blood of their brothers. We may not go to our rest at night, or waken to our work in the morning, without bearing the burden of the communal guilt; without being ourselves creators and causes of the wrongs we seek to bear away. At every step, when we would do good, evil is present with us, and exacts its tribute from the very citadel of the soul."

"This railway system practically administers the government of the United States, in all things that concern the system, and the governments of the several states of the Union as well. The majority of the United States senators recently elected have been its mere appointees and lobbyists, and agents at the same time for other corporate properties. In all this corrupt exploitation of the nation by the most degrading sort of economic force, in this debauchery of every citizen of my commonwealth, I am obliged to participate, in order to travel anywhere upon the national highways, whether I go upon God's errands or go in quest of evil to do."

"The hope of the social reformer is to open wide the gates of opportunity, so that every creature, from the least to the greatest, may make his life a moral adventure and a joy, and exhaust his possibilities in the thing he can best do."

"The only possible innocence that remains to me, while I pay forced tribute to the system, while I profit by its corrupting influences and agencies, while I bear my part in the culpable public ignorance and guilty moral apathy, is that of protest and exhaustless effort."

"If we stay at our posts, in order that we may change the system, we are on the backs of our brothers; if we desert our posts, in order that we may get off our brothers' backs, we take bread from their mouths, from the mouths of their children, and add to the army of the workless and hopeless."

"All that is good in civilization must be for the equal use of all, in order that each man may make his life most worthwhile to the common life and to himself."