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In this quote, Tony Blair argues that the model of socialism predicated on centralized control is obsolete, as it fails to understand the complexities of today's market economy.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.
Policy is largely set by economic elites and organized groups representing business interests with little concern for public attitudes or public safety, as long as the public remains passive and obedient.
A wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters. Who knew that the real rogues in American politics would be the ones who dare to get along?
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.
If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require.
If cars and buses were attacked daily by petrol bombs or stones for 16 months in Washington, could you imagine it would be tolerated? It would not, because in the name of democracy, to preserve democracy, steps would be taken.
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