Uploaded July 2024 | Updated September 2026, 7 minutes ago
'Envy and sloth are the moving powers. People want to work as little as possible. Men hate and envy the better caste of society, outwardly in a more favorable position, whose duty — production of the highest goods of culture — makes life inwardly all the more difficult and painful. Socialism — or the tyranny of the lowest, the stupidest, the superficial, the envious, the more-than-half actors — is the logical conclusion of "modern ideas" and their latent anarchism: but alas in the genial atmosphere of democratic wellbeing, the ability to draw conclusions, or draw to a close at all, slackens. One follows a crowd but no longer follows an argument. That is why socialism is a bitter, hopeless affair: and nothing is more amusing than to observe the inconsistency between the venomous and desperate faces made by contemporary Socialists — as well as the miserable, bruised feelings to which their prose style bears witness — and the innocent, lamb-like beatitude of their hopes and desires. Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of an almost-decrepit despotism, whose heir it wants to be. Its efforts are reactionary in the deepest sense. It desires a wealth of executive power, as only despotism had it; it outdoes everything in the past by striving for the destruction of the individual, which it sees as an unjustified luxury of nature, and which it intends to improve into an expedient organ of the community. Socialism crops up in the vicinity of all excessive displays of power because of its relation to it; it desires and furthers the Cæsarean power-state because it would like to be its heir. But even this inheritance will not suffice for its purposes; it needs the most submissive subjugation of all citizens to the absolute state, the like of which has never existed. And since it cannot count any longer on the old religious piety towards the state, having rather always to work automatically to eliminate piety, it can only hope to exist for periods by means of extreme terrorism. It secretly prepares for reigns of terror, and drives the word "justice" like a nail into the heads of the semi-educated masses, to rob them of their reason (after this reason has already suffered a great deal from its semi-education), and to give them a good conscience for the evil game that they are supposed to play. Socialism serves as a brutal and forceful way to teach the danger of accumulations of state power.'
— Friedrich Nietzsche
'Envy and sloth are the moving powers. People want to work as little as possible. Men hate and envy the better caste of society, outwardly in a more favorable position, whose duty — production of the highest goods of culture — makes life inwardly all the more difficult and painful. Socialism — or the tyranny of the lowest, the stupidest, the superficial, the envious, the more-than-half actors — is the logical conclusion of "modern ideas" and their latent anarchism: but alas in the genial atmosphere of democratic wellbeing, the ability to draw conclusions, or draw to a close at all, slackens. One follows a crowd but no longer follows an argument. That is why socialism is a bitter, hopeless affair: and nothing is more amusing than to observe the inconsistency between the venomous and desperate faces made by contemporary Socialists — as well as the miserable, bruised feelings to which their prose style bears witness — and the innocent, lamb-like beatitude of their hopes and desires. Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of an almost-decrepit despotism, whose heir it wants to be. Its efforts are reactionary in the deepest sense. It desires a wealth of executive power, as only despotism had it; it outdoes everything in the past by striving for the destruction of the individual, which it sees as an unjustified luxury of nature, and which it intends to improve into an expedient organ of the community. Socialism crops up in the vicinity of all excessive displays of power because of its relation to it; it desires and furthers the Cæsarean power-state because it would like to be its heir. But even this inheritance will not suffice for its purposes; it needs the most submissive subjugation of all citizens to the absolute state, the like of which has never existed. And since it cannot count any longer on the old religious piety towards the state, having rather always to work automatically to eliminate piety, it can only hope to exist for periods by means of extreme terrorism. It secretly prepares for reigns of terror, and drives the word "justice" like a nail into the heads of the semi-educated masses, to rob them of their reason (after this reason has already suffered a great deal from its semi-education), and to give them a good conscience for the evil game that they are supposed to play. Socialism serves as a brutal and forceful way to teach the danger of accumulations of state power.'
— Friedrich Nietzsche
