Politics & Power Quote by Gertrude Stein

Stein takes a buzzword - collectivism - and punctures it with the kind of dry literalism that doubles as a philosophical prank. "There is no such animal" sounds like plain talk, but it’s really a stylistic weapon: she treats political abstraction as a category error, as if someone has tried to sell her a unicorn. What follows is classic Stein: repetition that pretends to be messy while tightening the noose. "Sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not" turns democracy into a shrugging procedural detail, not a sacred expression of the people’s will. The rhythm is almost nursery-like, but the implication is hard-edged: groups don’t act; individuals do, and the group’s authority is just a tallying mechanism we agree to respect.

The subtext is skepticism toward any ideology that claims to dissolve the person into the mass. Stein had watched the early 20th century swing from liberal optimism to the machinery of World War I, and later the rise of totalitarian claims about "the people". Her insistence that it’s "always individualism" is less libertarian anthem than anti-mystification: beware any politics that pretends the collective has a mind, a morality, a destiny.

Context matters: Stein’s modernism was built on dismantling inherited forms, including the smooth, convincing sentence. Here, the halting loop ("if they do they do") refuses eloquence on purpose. She’s mimicking how power justifies itself - banal, circular, unargued. The line lands because it doesn’t debate collectivism; it makes it sound silly, then shows how easily "the rest" can become a mask for whoever is counting.