Success Quote by Adlai E. Stevenson

Stevenson’s line is a Cold War scalpel: it lets Americans keep their moral self-image while indicting their chief rival as a kind of ethical counterfeit. Calling communism “the corruption of a dream of justice” concedes something U.S. politicians rarely wanted to concede outright in the 1950s and early ’60s: the dream is real, and it’s tempting. Inequality, exploitation, racial hierarchy, boom-and-bust capitalism - these were not Soviet propaganda inventions. By granting that communism begins as a “dream,” Stevenson frames its appeal as human rather than foreign, which is a subtler move than simple demonization.

The rhetorical trick is in “corruption.” It turns a radical critique into a cautionary tale about means and power. The problem isn’t the desire for justice; it’s what happens when that desire is routed through a system that concentrates authority, polices thought, and justifies coercion as historical necessity. “Corruption” implies contamination of something initially pure - a moral fall, not merely a policy dispute. That lets Stevenson argue for reform without revolution, and for liberal democracy as the proper custodian of fairness.

There’s also a domestic subtext: he’s warning Americans that if they treat justice as optional, they cede the language of justice to extremists. The sentence reads like an anti-communist message aimed at the center-left: pursue civil rights, labor protections, and social welfare seriously, or watch the “dream” get weaponized elsewhere. Stevenson isn’t flattering capitalism; he’s defending it by insisting it must earn its legitimacy.