"...This is the view that in the course of economic development there is a 'moment' for socialism. In the early stages of economic development, the pattern looks much more like the Marxian model. Where the country still has a large peasant or even feudal rural sector, economic development can easily result in the increase of surplus value falling wholly into the hands of a small class of capitalists and landowners. The early stages of economic development almost always resulted in increasing inequality of income, if only because a societycan rarely develop uniformly. If one part of society develops while the rest does not, the part that develops will growahead of the rest, increasing its income, while the reststagnates, or even perhaps goes downhill a little as the traditional sector finds itself in competition with the advanced sector. At this moment, the bus for socialism comes along and Marxism looks plausible. It is easy to whip u hatred against unpopular and especially if it gets invvolved in an unsuccessful war, a revolutionary overthrow may be achieved and a communist party gets into power The country then rides of in the socialist bus, and it is hard to get off it.
"Sometimes, however, the moment for socialism passses. In Western Europe the moment was probably 1848 and it was too early. The Communist Maifeston had just been written, and there was no organized communist part anywhere which could take advantage of the discontent and disturbance and effect revolutionaryy overthrow. Once the moment has passed and the bus has gone by, if there is a successful process of capitalistic development, the Marxist system becomes increasingly unrealistic and the socialist alternative increasingly unattractive. It is one thing to cry 'workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but you chaings'; it is another to urge the workers of the world to 'untire for you have nothing to lose bbut your outboard motors.' A long run rise in the real wages is poor fuel for the revolutionary fire. In the United States I doubty if the socialist bus ever came by, although there was a moment in 1932 when it might have been glimpsed somewhere down the street. One of the things which contributes to the instability of the present world is that for a great many precapitalist countries, the bus has not come by yet, and the question is still open as to which mode of development they wish to follow." 1
"I am not arguing that all dialectical processes are bad, but I do think they have a bias in that direction which is enhanced by the presence of the dialectical philosphy or ideology. It is in societies where the prevailing ideologies are nondialectical--stressing community, agreement, orderliness, courtesy, and love rather than conflict, turbulance, confrontation, envy, and hate--that the dialectical processes themselves are likely to be most fruitful. A dialectocal philosophy, however, whether nationalistic, racist or Marxist, which stresses victory rather than problem-solving, beating down the enemy rather than cooperating with him (and which therefore tends to justifyand excuse the immoral behavior which dialectical processes always produce), is likely to intensify the dialectical processes themselves to the point where they will become damaging to all parties, and unfriendly to human welfare and development.
"I will not be surprised if the Marxists feel that I am unfair to Marx and to them. Indeed, I may be accused of engaging in precisely the dialectical processes of which I am so suspicious for a polemical look is inevitably part of a dialectical process. But, be this as it may, it is unfair to put nationalism, racism, and Marxism in the same stable of dialectical philosophy. The appropriate word here would be 'classism' but the word does not seem to exist, and 'Marxism' has become a synonym for it. The moral strength of Marxism is its sympathy with the oppressed, which is much more compatible with the class dialectic than with the dialectic of nation or race. Furthermore, Marx himself was a towering figure with a prophetic moral challenge which demands a response of some kind. WHen great men are woring, however, they do all the more damage. It is when error is bound up with truth, and eveil with good, that error and evil achieve power. While morally, therefore, Marx is a far superior figure to (shall we say) a Hitler or a Napoleon, as charismatic legitimators of dialectical processes they wear the same brand: all three have created an immense amount of human misery." 2
"...Any positive rate of growth whatever eventually carries a human population to an unacceptable magnitude, no matter how small the rate of growth may be unless the rate of population growth can be reduced to zero before the population reaches an unacceptable magnitude. There is a famous theorem in economics, one which I call the dismal theorem, which states that if the only thing which can check the growth of population is starvation and misery, then the population will grow until it is sufficiently miserable and starving to check its growth. There is a second, even worse theorem which I call the utterly dismal theorem. It says that if the only thing which can check the growth of population is starvation and misery, then the ultimate result of any technological improvement is to enable a larger number of people to live in misery than before and hence to increase the total sum of human misery." 3