...in demanding the freedom of the masses we do not intend to do away with natural influences to which man is subjected by individuals and groups. All we want is to do away with is factitious, legitimized influences, to do away with the privileges in exerting influence.
Those who have power to give have also the power to take away. The conferring of reality is a means of taking control. (From: Chapter 3: The Labor Movement, Page 45..)
In politics, power implies sanctions for noncompliance, and these sanctions often depend on coercion and force. But power based solely on coercion is an extreme that is normally avoided, because it is more difficult to maintain and less dependable than power based on common values. When values are shared, people usually comply readily with demands made upon them, because they accept the legitimacy of these demands. This is why those whose power is primarily coercive always seem to try to get their values accepted by the people they wish to control. Voluntary compliance, their actions seem to confirm, will be a more certain and less arduous way of holding power within a society than coercion. (From: Epilogue: The Meaning of Revolution in Viet Nam, P....)
...I don't like the sneers, libels, parrot phrased and financially profitable back-scratching which flourish in our English literary world, and perhaps in yours also.
A modern literary intellectual lives and writes in constant dread -- not, indeed, of public opinion in the wider sense, but of public opinion within his own group.
