Daily Inspiration Quote by John Bates Clark

Clark is doing something sly here: treating political loyalty less like a moral conviction than a lever you can pull. His point isn’t that socialism is ethically superior or economically sound; it’s that it’s strategically smart because it reroutes anger away from the institution that can punish you (the state) and toward the institution that can be regulated or redesigned (the industrial system). In that framing, the “better classes” aren’t necessarily nobler; they’re the people with education, influence, and administrative access - the ones who can translate critique into policy. Socialism, for Clark, flatters their self-image as reformers while letting them keep a stabilizing faith in government.

The subtext is a map of how dissent gets domesticated. “Attack the state” triggers a reflexive patriotism, even among people who hate their circumstances, because the state can present itself as the shared story, the flag, the last remaining “we.” But if you attack capitalism while “appeal[ing] to the state,” you turn government from target to savior. You get to be radical about factories and wages while sounding loyal about the nation. That’s not an accident; it’s a rhetorical bargain that makes reform legible and safe.

Context matters: Clark wrote in an era of labor unrest, concentrated corporate power, and rising socialist movements. As a leading marginalist economist, he was invested in saving the legitimacy of markets. This quote reads like an early recognition that the most durable challenges to capitalism are often the ones that recruit the state’s prestige rather than confront it head-on.