QuoteProject
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.
Tony Blair
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

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In this quote, Tony Blair argues that the model of socialism predicated on centralized control is obsolete, as it fails to understand the complexities of today's market economy.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.

Themes

SocialismState ControlEconomyClass DivisionOppression

In practice

Example use cases

During a political debate about economic policies.

More from Tony Blair

The public think the politicians don't know or care about their lives; and the politicians feel misunderstood.
Tony BlairRead
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.
Tony BlairRead
Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: education, education and education.
Tony BlairRead
However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.
Tony BlairRead
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.
Tony BlairRead
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.
Tony BlairRead

Similar quotes

The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.
Caroline KennedyRead
The local interest of a State ought in every case to give way to the interests of the Union. For when a sacrifice of one or the other is necessary, the former becomes only an apparent, partial interest, and should yield, on the principle that the smaller good ought never to oppose the greater good.
Alexander HamiltonRead
[The Federal Convention] is really an assembly of demigods.
Thomas JeffersonRead
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.
Atal Bihari VajpayeeRead
Economic libertarians and Christian evangelicals, united by their common enemy, are strange bedfellows in today's Republican party, just as the two Georges - the archconservative Wallace and the uberliberal McGovern - found themselves in the same Democratic Party in 1972.
Steven PinkerRead
War expands government powers. The trouble is that, when the war goes away, the government powers do not.
P. J. O'RourkeRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.