Leadership Quote by John McCarthy

McCarthy’s line is a small, sharp piece of political jujitsu: it pretends to mourn (“Alas”) while smuggling in a character indictment. The target isn’t just socialist policy, but socialist motivation. By framing hard work in “these occupations” as something people do for either benevolence or money, he narrows the moral universe to two acceptable engines of effort: altruism and self-interest. Then he claims socialists lack both. It’s not an economic argument so much as a psychological one, designed to make the opposing ideology feel less like a theory and more like a temperamental flaw.

The subtext is classic anti-socialist skepticism: take away profit and you sap discipline; appeal to the common good and you’re betting on saints. McCarthy’s sting comes from implying that socialism requires an improbable citizen - generous enough to labor diligently without reward - while simultaneously casting socialists as too soft-hearted for the grind and too impure to admit they want incentives. It’s a double bind: if socialists work for money, they betray their creed; if they don’t, they confirm the stereotype of laziness.

Contextually, this fits the long Cold War-era and postwar Anglo-American rhetorical tradition that treats markets as realism and socialism as moral theater. “Few” does strategic work, too: it sounds empirical without offering evidence, inviting readers to nod along based on cultural hunches about human nature. The line lands because it recodes a policy disagreement into a judgment about what people are really like.