“Socialism is the halfway house to communism”
“Socialism is the halfway house to communism” is a popular saying of disputed authorship. In the early 1930s, playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) said that fascism is the halfway house to communism. Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev (1894-1971) is sometimes given this saying, added to the “doses of socialism” remark that Krushchev never said: “We cannot expect American people to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can assist their elected leaders by giving them small doses of socialism until suddenly they awaken to find they have communism. Socialism is the halfway house to communism.”
A 1938 book stated: “(T)he Catholic Press had constantly represented Socialism as a half-way house to Communism and Bolshevism.” The saying “socialism is the half-way house to communism” became especially popular at the start of the cold war, from about 1947-1950.
12 March 1930, Springfield (MA) Republican, pg. 12, col. 3:
“Back to the artel” is the new slogan in Russia, and it seems to have given a fresh impetus to the rural cooperative movement which Stalin declared to be imperiled by the indescretions of local Communists.
(...)
The government may regard it as a half-way house to Communism, but if the artel meets the farmers’ needs they may decline to go further.
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What I said in N.Z.:
The newspaper utterances of Mr. George Bernard Shaw in New Zealand, March 15th to April 15th, 1934
By Bernard Shaw
Wellington: Commercial Printing and Pub. Co. of N.Z.
1934
Pg. 16:
Do you still hold the opinion expressed in your Fabian address “In Praise of Guy Fawkes” that Fascism is the half-way house to Communism?
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Europe into the abyss:
Behind the scenes of secret politics
By Sándor Forbát
London: Pallas Pub. Co.
1938
Pg. 190:
Add to this that at the instance of the Vatican, the Catholic priesthood and the Catholic Press had constantly represented Socialism as a half-way house to Communism and Bolshevism, and it will be understood that a coalition with the Socialists would have caused a panic among the Catholic Right wing, and would have split the party from top to bottom.
28 August 1938, Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer, ‘In the Current Magazines,” pg. 10B, col. 6:
George Bernard Shaw tosses a neat bomb at us across the sea.
“It is not fair to call Signor Mussolini and Herr Hitler dictators. They are leaders,” he states in an article to appear in Liberty for Sept. 10.
“Fascism is a new form of government, a sort of halfway house to Communism. It has been produced by proletarian revolutionaries who are completely disgusted with party parliaments on the British model.”
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The Lutheran Witness
v. 58 - 1939
Pg. 77:
But when all has been said, it remains true that state Socialism is only the half-way house to Communism.
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Town Meeting
By National Broadcasting Company, Blue Network Company
v. 13 - 1947
Pg. 33:
Mr. Owen: Well, I should say that socialism was the half-way house to communism in the sense that an article half-way down the throat of the tiger is at the halfway house.
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Party Choice:
The real issue between the parties
By Michael Berry
London: Eyre & Spottiswoode
1948
Pg. 71:
As has already come to pass on the Continent, history will show that Socialism is but a halfway house to Communism.
16 February 1949, Chicago (IL) Daily Tribune, “Socialism in the CIO,” pg. 16:
Socialism, as has repeatedly been said, is a half way house to communism, so in the long run the CIO, if it has its way, will wind up in the same place as its…
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The Coming Defeat of Communism
By James Burnham
New York, NY: J. Day
1950
Pg. 259:
Very many businessmen do not know the difference between a communist and an anarchist, democratic socialist, or mere eccentric dissident. They pick up a pompous phrase like “socialism is the halfway house to communism,” and imagine that by repeating it they are being profoundly philosophical.
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How not to run for President:
A handbook for Republicans
By James L. Wick
New York, NY: Vantage Press
1952
Pg. 93:
People willing to respond to this technique make perfect followers for ( 1 ) Communism, ( 2 ) Socialism, the halfway house to Communism, and (3) New and Fair Dealism, the halfway house to Socialism.
10 August 1958, Springfield (MA) Republican, “Bishop Sheen Writes…” by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, pg. 5C, col. 4:
Even for the Communists, socialism was the halfway house to communism.
5 February 1971, New Orleans (LA) Times-Picayune, sec. 1, pg. 19, col. 3:
Kruschev said in 1943; “We cannot expect American people to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can assist their elected leaders by giving them small doses of socialism until suddenly they awaken to find they have communism. Socialism is the halfway house to communism.”
25 April 1975, New Orleans (LA) Times-Picayune, sec. 1, pg. 23, col. 3:
Killer Kruschev is also on record in 1960, saying we cannot expect the American people to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can assist their elected leaders by giving them small doses of socialism until suddenly they awaken to find they have communism. Socialism is the halfway-house to communism. We won’t have communism until after we have gone socialist.
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They never said it:
A book of fake quotes, misquotes, and misleading attributions
By Paul F Boller and John H George
New York, NY: Oxford University Press
1989
Pg. 59:
Krushchev, Nikita (1894-1971)
DOSES-OF-SOCIALISM QUOTE “We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can aid their elected leaders in giving them small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have communism.”
Krushchev’s doses-of-socialism statement, supposedly made at a secret meeting in Moscow just before the Soviet leader visited the United States in 1959, turned up in the United States in 1960 and was soon being publicized by John Birchers and other ultra-conservatives.