A Quote by Michael Foot

Socialism without public ownership is nothing but a fantastic apology.

Michael Foot

Quote Topics

Apology Fantastic Nothing Ownership Public Socialism Without

Quote Author

Michael Foot
English - Politician
Born: July 23, 1913

Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it -- at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens.

Ayn Rand

State ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism - if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials - but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.

James Connolly

People are hungering for property — for a secure, permanent and independent link with spaceship earth that ownership represents and which only ownership can protect or defend. It is humiliating to possess nothing, to own nothing, and hence to produce nothing and to count for nothing.

Louis O. Kelso

I made the case for public ownership in 'Another World is Possible' - a manifesto for 21st-century socialism - as it is the most rational approach for managing resources in the long-term interest of the entire community.

John McDonnell

Socialism, in the traditional sense, meant government ownership and operation of the means of production. Outside of North Korea and a couple of other spots, no one in the world today would define socialism that way. That will never come back.

Milton Friedman

Voluntaryism is the idea that all human interactions should be free of coercion, based on individual self-ownership. This is in contrast to socialism, which is based on coercion justified by collective ownership.

Roger Ver

From the viewpoint of economic democracy, the capitalism-socialism debate was a debate between private and state capitalism (i.e., the private or public employment system), and the debate was as misframed as would be a debate between the private or public ownership of slaves.

David P. Ellerman

The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.

Ayn Rand

The transfer of Wall Street from private ownership to public ownership has been a big step backward.

John C. Bogle

You can't have bad without good. You can't have right without wrong. You can't have fantastic without mundane. You need to experience all that to really earn the title of the film, 'Fantastic Four.'

Josh Trank

The ownership of industry by the state - that is not socialism.

Erich Fromm

Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] ... by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks ... to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.

Winston Churchill

The term "state socialism" is not precise. Under this term many understand an order under which a certain part of the wealth, sometimes a quite considerable part, passes into state ownership or under its control while in the great majority of cases the ownership of plants, factories, and land, remains in private hands.

Joseph Stalin

We're in the west, and we have a rich history of gun ownership and hunting, but people here across the state understand the difference between public safety and personal ownership and that we can have both if we protect the second amendment.

Jacky Rosen

Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.