For no one, in our long decline, So dusty, spiteful and divided, Had quite such pleasant friends as mine, Or loved them half as much as I did.
Hilaire BellocCommunism worked honestly by officials devoid of human frailties and devoted to nothing but the good of its slaves, would have certain manifest material advantages as compared with a proletarian wage-system where millions live in semi-starvation, and many millions more in permanent dread thereof. But even if it were administered thus Communism would only produce its benefits through imposing slavery.
Hilaire BellocIn the form of security and sufficiency for the men who labor to the profit of others, and in the form of registering and controlling them in the form of an organized public supervision of their labor, slavery is already afoot. When slavery shall succeed it will succeed through the acquiescence of those who will be enslaved, for they will prefer sufficiency and security with enslavement, to freedom, responsibility, insecurity and the threat of insufficiency.
Hilaire BellocOne man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest - indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind.
Hilaire Belloc