The public think the politicians don't know or care about their lives; and the politicians feel misunderstood.
Tony BlairRead
The socialism of centralised state control of industry and production, is dead. It misunderstood the nature and development of a modern market economy. It failed to recognise that the state and public sector can become a vested interest capable of oppression as much as the vested interests of wealth and capital. it was based on a false view of class that became too rigid to explain or illuminate the nature of class division today.
Interpretation
The quote critiques centralized state control in socialism, highlighting its failure to grasp modern economic dynamics.
In this quote, Tony Blair argues that the model of socialism predicated on centralized control is obsolete, as it fails to understand the complexities of today's market economy. He emphasizes that the state itself can become an oppressive vested interest, similar to private wealth, and that the rigid class divisions it was based on no longer accurately reflect contemporary society's class structure.
In practice
During a political debate about economic policies.
The public think the politicians don't know or care about their lives; and the politicians feel misunderstood.
There is no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: Defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must.
Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: education, education and education.
However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.
I want my son to grow up in a place where the people are more powerful than the government and not the other way around.
The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge.
I have the highest respect for Obama. I have worked with 10 American presidents, both Republicans and Democrats. As far as Israeli security is concerned, he has done the most that an American president can do.
Whatever understanding is reached with Pakistan has to be followed honestly, and everybody will have to rise above party politics and be actively committed to make India prosperous.
Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.
With his mendacity and increasingly virulent attacks on immigrants, Muslims, women, the press, the judiciary, the intelligence services, the F.B.I. - any group or institution that he finds threatening or useful as a scapegoat - Mr. Trump is attempting the Orwellian trick of redefining American reality on his own terms.
In every society in human history, including the United States, those in power seek to imbue themselves with the attributes of religion and patriotism as a way of getting greater support for their policy and insulating themselves from any criticism.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.