Embarrassing Quotation of the Week

by Liberty and Power

"Assuming that the increase in wealth production and population continue at the present compound rates, it seems likely that in the course of two or three decades, the U.S.S.R. will have become the wealthiest country in the world, and at the same time the community enjoying the greatest aggregate of individual freedom."

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), quoted in New York Herald Tribune Books 12, March 8, 1936, 2.

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David T. Beito - 6/15/2006

Aggregate seems to have been a favorite word of many statists during the 1930s.

Protagoras - 6/14/2006

The phrase "the greatest aggregate of individual freedom" seems like an oxymoron to me.

David T. Beito - 6/13/2006

I'll fix. I thought that I'd remembered that she was a co-author but when I looked the book up on Amazon.com, her name was left out so I thought I'd been mistaken.

Mark Brady - 6/13/2006

Sidney's wife, Beatrice Potter Webb, was coauthor. And, second, the question mark was dropped from the title when the second edition was published.