Woodrow Wilson on socialism and democracy

It proposes that all idea of a limitation of public authority by individual rights be put out of view, and that the State consider itself bound to stop only at what is unwise or futile in its universal superintendence alike of individual and of public interests. The thesis of the state socialist is that there is, that no line can be drawn between private and public affairs which the State may not cross at will.

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[I]t is very clear that in fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.

~ Woodrow Wilson, "Socialism and Democracy," 1887

Woodrow Wilson
1922-1925