What I do not see is the argument...that we ought somehow to go on a quite different issue, a purely economic issue, to this new extreme which seems,… - Harold Macmillan

It's a good thing to be laughed at. It's better than to be ignored.

When I ventured to criticise, the other day, this system I was, I am afraid, misunderstood. As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism. I am sure they will be more efficient. What I ventured to question was the using of these huge sums as if they were income. I know now, I have learnt now from the letters that I have received, that I am quite out of date. Modern economists have decided there is no difference between capital and income. I am not so sure. In my younger days, I and perhaps others of your Lordships had friends, good friends, very good fellows indeed too, who failed to make this distinction. For a few years everything went on very well, and then at last the crash came, and they were forced to retire out to some dingy lodging-house in Boulogne, or if the estate were larger and the trustees more generous, to a decent accommodation at Baden-Baden.

It is not enough to deplore and condemn the political excesses and the economic inadequacies of the totalitarian states. We must prove that democracy can do better.