Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 868-869 of Frank Knight’s review – titled “Lippmann’s The Good Society” – in the December 1938 issue of the Journal of Political Economy, of Walter Lippmann’s important 1937 book, The Good Society (emphasis added):

In the reviewer’s opinion, the view that collectivism means dictatorship is correct beyond reasonable doubt. The authorities of a collectivist state would have to have unlimited power, and security of tenure, and would have to exercise their power ruthlessly to keep the machinery of organized production and distribution running. They would have to enforce orders ruthlessly and suppress all disputation and argument about policies; and, as a condition for minimum efficiency, they would also have to do everything possible to remove grounds of difference of opinion, by giving the people the appropriate “information” and conditioning of attitudes, i.e., “propaganda.” They would have to do these things whether they wanted to or not; and the probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping-master on a slave plantation.