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The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself.

Bernard Crick

Certainly if the fundamental problem of society is that demands are infinite and resources are always limited, politics, not economics is the master science.
BERNARD CRICK

Demand Fundamentals Problem
Politics are, as it were, the market place and the price mechanism of all social demands – though there is no guarantee that a just price will be struck; and there is nothing spontaneous about politics- it depends on deliberate and continuous activity.
BERNARD CRICK

Demand Guarantees Political
What matters in Politics is what men actually do – sincerity is no excuse for acting unpolitically, and insincerity may be channelled by politics into good results.
BERNARD CRICK

Acting Matter Men What
In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of ‘reason’ as single sources of authority.
BERNARD CRICK

Firsts Real Reason
Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.
BERNARD CRICK

Manners Rough Things Useful
The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order.
BERNARD CRICK

Agony Order Practice
BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.
BERNARD CRICK

Boredom Enemy Men
Since the business of politics is the conciliation of differing interests, justice must not merely be done, but to be seen to be done.
BERNARD CRICK

Done Interest Justice
The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.
BERNARD CRICK

Condescension Men Praise
Factory workers are not working for capitalism, they are working for a living wage.
BERNARD CRICK

Factory Living Workers Working
Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own.
BERNARD CRICK

Character Poor Relation
The method of rule of the tyrant and the oligarch is quite simply to clobber, coerce, or overawe all or most other groups in the interest of their own.
BERNARD CRICK

Groups Method Tyrants
Free men stick their necks out.
BERNARD CRICK

Free Men Neck Sticks
Democracy is perhaps the most promiscuous word in the world of public affairs.
BERNARD CRICK

Affair Democracy World
One of the symptoms of a declining social order is that its members have to give most of their time to politics, rather than to the real tasks of economic production, in an attempt to patch up the cracks already appearing from the ‘inner contradictions’ of such a system.
BERNARD CRICK

Giving Order Real
The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.
BERNARD CRICK

Consistency Ideas Skills

The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself.

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The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself.

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