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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

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
Factory workers are not working for capitalism, they are working for a living wage.
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Factory Living Workers Working
The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.
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Consistency Ideas Skills
There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.
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Certainty Danger Desire
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
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
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
BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.
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Boredom Enemy Men
Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.
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Government Impossible
If, of course, one builds into the concept of an ‘individual’ all that Professor Hayek does in his Road To Serfdom.
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Builds Men Order Professor
Totalitarian rule marks the sharpest contrast imaginable with political rule, and ideological thinking is an explicit and direct challenge to political thinking.
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Challenges Ideological Political Rule Thinking
Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.
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Autocracy Totalitarianism
Democracy is perhaps the most promiscuous word in the world of public affairs.
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Affair Democracy World
The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.
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Condescension Men Praise
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.
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Character Poor Relation
In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of ‘reason’ as single sources of authority.
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Firsts Real Reason
If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.
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Discovery Government Need Support
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
To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance.
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Derivatives Doctrine Social
The unique character of political activity lies, quite literally, in its publicity.
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Character Lying Unique
The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.
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Doctrine Political Politics Problem
Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.
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Manners Rough Things Useful
Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.
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Ideas Simple Technology
Too often the revolutionary is the man who must create order in the chaos left by failed conservatives.
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Chaos Conservatives Men Order
Certainly if the fundamental problem of society is that demands are infinite and resources are always limited, politics, not economics is the master science.
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Demand Fundamentals Problem
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.
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Acting Matter Men What
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

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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