Andrew Collier Quotes

To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough

It has become commonplace since 1917 to contrast democratic with revolutionary socialism. This contrast – misleading even today – would have made no sense in the nineteenth century. Until relatively late in Marx’s life, manhood suffrage existed only in some American states (not all – slaves could not vote, and some non-slave-owning states had a property qualification for voting). It existed also briefly in France from the revolution of 1848 to May 1850. Nowhere could women vote. The first fully sovereign state with genuinely universal suffrage (women as well as men) was Australia in 1901, eighteen years after Marx’s death.

It is sometimes mistakenly thought that what we are ultimately after is consensus, so that a single hold-out spoils the whole enterprise. What we are truly after, however, is our own best understanding of a common, ontologically independent reality. Although that judgement is rationally made only in social dialogue with others, if we are truly seeking to be rational about our beliefs, it is each of us, ourselves, whom we are each ultimately trying to convince.