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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

There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.
BERNARD CRICK

Certainty Danger Desire
Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.
BERNARD CRICK

Government Impossible
Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupation of free men, and its existence is a test of freedom. The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.
BERNARD CRICK

Men Political Politics
Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.
BERNARD CRICK

Autocracy Totalitarianism
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
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
Factory workers are not working for capitalism, they are working for a living wage.
BERNARD CRICK

Factory Living Workers Working
Totalitarian rule marks the sharpest contrast imaginable with political rule, and ideological thinking is an explicit and direct challenge to political thinking.
BERNARD CRICK

Challenges Ideological Political Rule Thinking
The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.
BERNARD CRICK

Consistency Ideas Skills
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
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

Political Politics Together
Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.
BERNARD CRICK

Ideas Simple Technology
Individualism and Economic Order and many other works, which is, to put it briefly, the whole of laisser-faire economic theory, then plainly man as such a programmed predator has very little interest in being fraternal, or very little chance.
BERNARD CRICK

Economic Individualism Programmed Such Theory
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 is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence…politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.
BERNARD CRICK

Evil Political Politics
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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