Churchill Misquote on Socialism is Somewhere Over the Rainbow — Here’s a New One
“A young [person] who isn’t a socialist hasn’t got a heart; an old [person] who is a socialist hasn’t got a [brain].” –Not Winston Churchill
“You’ve always had the power…you just had to learn it for yourself.” –Glinda, the Good Witch (The Wizard of Oz)
For those unfamiliar with L. Frank Baum’s literary classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its widely celebrated silver screen adaptation, the tale is one of a young girl — Dorothy — who, along with her house and faithful dog, Toto, gets swept up by a tornado and transported to a magical world “over the rainbow.” As Dorothy and Toto negotiate that fantasy world in search of a path home, they meet and befriend three main characters: the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion. During their interactions with Dorothy, each character reveals that they lack at least one critical element needed to live a full, flourishing life. For the Tin Man, the missing ingredient is a heart. The Scarecrow has no brain. And the Lion lacks courage.
Together, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion provide a framework for analyzing what John Oliver has called “conservatives’ favorite Winston Churchill quote” — which, as Oliver’s segment of the same name makes clear, is not a Churchill quote at all. As illustrated below, such an analysis reveals that contrary to the Right’s frequent anti-socialism appeals to the quote, it actually paints a negative image of capitalism when taken to its logical conclusion. Consequently, the end of this commentary puts forward an alternative aphorism that is arguably less “over the rainbow” than the original. Before getting to that point, though, the next section quickly introduces the quotation and who really said it.
The Quote and Who Said It
A common version of the quote in question appears as the first epigraph to this post. It opines that a young person who isn’t a socialist has no heart, while an older person who is still a socialist has no brain.
The origins of this statement are uncertain. Indeed, it has been called an “orphan quote” due to its ambiguous provenance. However, versions of the quip have manifested in political discourses with striking regularity since the 19th Century. Among the earliest documented uses of it was by French Premier Francois Guizot, who stated: “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.” Later, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau altered Guizot’s statement by replacing the term “republican” with “socialist”; and U.K. Prime Minister David Lloyd George is sometimes credited with the common phrasing presented in the epigraph. Thus, the quote is not an invention of Churchill, nor is there any record of Churchill ever saying it. Yet that hasn’t stopped commentators on the Right from continuing to claim it for him to this day.
Regardless of who said what and when, the more pertinent matter is that some version of the quote reliably comes to the defense of capitalism in contemporary political debates, where it tends to be broadcast out by power holders via their large platforms.
But is the quote really a positive defense of capitalism? To find out, let’s briefly walk down its logical Yellow Brick Road with the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion to see where it leads.
Recasting the Characters
To kick off the journey, let’s first identify the two broad categories of people referenced in the popular variant of the quote from the epigraph: (1) socialists and (2) not socialists. Based on modern interpretations and usage of the quote, the latter of these categories is tantamount to capitalists, or proponents of the prevailing system of global capitalism. Substituting these terms into the famed “Churchill” quote produces an equivalent statement: a young person who embraces capitalism hasn’t got a heart; an old person who rejects capitalism hasn’t got a brain.
Right away, it’s evident that the adage isn’t exactly a full-throated endorsement of capitalism. Rather, it contains a self-aware admission that to blindly embrace capitalism (or, if you prefer, anti-socialism) is heartless — presumably because the system generates massive inequality, undermines democracy, and causes untold damage to the environment. Ignoring that observation for the moment, the saying implies that a rejection of capitalism comes from an uninformed moral or emotional place — that it is rooted in egalitarian ideals that seem possible and attainable only from the hopeful, unspoiled vistas of youth and unworldliness. Later, as one ages and gains worldly experience, those ideals are correctly recognized to be irrational, if not foolish.
In other words, the wisdom gained by virtue of age and experience is that, because the world is made up of people maximizing their own interests in a system dominated by private property, socialism or egalitarianism is nothing more than that distant, youthful ideal. Like Oz, it’s a fantasy land — “somewhere over the rainbow” — that cannot be reached from the real world, but by dreams or a stroke of magic. For that reason, to continue to be a socialist later in life is to have no brain, as the anti-socialists like to say.
Recasting this argument with Dorothy’s companions from Oz can help take it to the end of its Yellow Brick Road. Doing so exposes its irredeemable weakness and its anti-capitalist implications. The argument goes something like this:
- Early in life, a person who embraces capitalism is like the Tin Man — cold, distant, and heartless. The reason is that young people tend to possess egalitarian ideals that they approach with a heartful optimism. As such, few young people resemble the Tin Man.
- Later in life, a person who embraces socialism is like the Scarecrow — naïve, impractical, and brainless. The reason is ostensibly that life experience in the prevailing social system teaches us that youthful, pro-socialist ideals are unattainable — that, in order to thrive in the world, it is necessary to put self-interest always ahead of collective interests. As such, few people resemble the Scarecrow when they are older.
In sum, as a person ages and experiences the ways of the world, they become less like the Scarecrow (naïve, impractical, making decisions from the heart) and more like the Tin Man (calculating, strategic, making decisions from mindful analysis as opposed to heartfelt idealism). They are pro-socialists when they are young, and anti-socialists when they are older.
How well does this argument hold up? To find out, we can ask the star characters…
For his part, the Tin Man — who lived a full life prior to losing his heart — recognized the danger of a world dominated by cold, heartless, self-interest. He famously commented, “You people with hearts…have something to guide you” — something to help separate right from wrong. Without that moral grounding, he suggested, there is little to stop one from doing damage to the world around them. Accordingly, when posed with the question of whether he’d prefer brains or a heart, he responded unhesitatingly: “I shall take the heart…for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.” In other words, after reflecting on his lived experience, the Tin Man reasoned that cold, calculating decisions are more disposed toward doing harm to others than to delivering rich, fulfilling, happy lives. Happiness, to him, is not created in a world where everyone acts strategically for themselves, taking what they can before others can get to it first. It’s produced in a heartful society characterized by care, empathy, mutual aid, and fulfilling interpersonal relationships.
The Scarecrow similarly concluded, in The Marvelous Land of Oz, that happiness and life satisfaction do not come from endless pursuit and accumulation of wealth. To him, “brains [are] far superior to money, in every way…[for] if one has money without brains, [they] cannot use it to advantage; but if one has brains without money, they…[can] live comfortably to the end of [their] days.” Like the Tin Man, a satisfied, comfortable life to the Scarecrow is one full of care and mutual aid. Opting not to seek fame or power for himself, the Scarecrow eventually commented that a good life is one in which he’d simply “never be parted [from his friends] in the future.”
If these conclusions don’t sound compatible with the “if you’re still a socialist when you’re older…” argument, it’s because they’re not. At bottom, both the Tin Man and the Scarecrow, when reflecting on their considerable life experiences, rejected the notion that a rewarding life is one in which people indifferently maximize their self-interests and accumulate personal wealth without regard for the damage their behavior might cause to the world around them. Whereas one began without a heart and the other without a brain, both ended at the same destination. Namely, the common conclusion of heart and brain was that it is preferable to live in a society where care and mutual aid are stronger forces than greed and self-interest, rather than the other way around.
A New “Churchill” Quote
So, what do lessons learned by fictional characters in a children’s fantasy novel have to do with a famous “Churchill” quote on socialism and political maturation? In my view, they help reveal the argument’s biggest weakness, as well as its paradoxically anti-capitalist sentiment. Explicitly, if life experience reveals that heartful, caring, egalitarian visions of society are not attainable in the prevailing political-economic system, then abandoning those visions is less a sign of wisdom and brains and more a sign of resignation. Stated alternatively, if embracing pro-socialist or egalitarian ideals later in life is, per the “Churchill” argument, irrational given the way the economic system works, then the problem lies with the system — not with the individual who still wants the system to be more equitable.
From that perspective, the argument’s weakness is its determinism. It suggests that thoughtful, heartful people can’t change the world — they can only live in and adjust themselves to it. The existing social system is a fact of life. You can’t beat it, so you either join it, or you’re a foolish Scarecrow without a brain.
Now, it might be the straw in my head talking, but an untransformable global capitalist society doesn’t come off as a happy ending in that story. A system that remorselessly extinguishes hopeful visions of a more equitable world isn’t a hero. It’s a villain. But it’s not the invincible villain that the “Churchill” quote makes it out to be. All across the globe and throughout history, groups and movements of other-regarding people come together to collectively demand, and ultimately create, substantive, progressive social change. We have agency. We can act. We can undermine prevailing forces of inequality, systemic racism, and environmental destruction. And when we work collectively and constantly toward those ends, we can change the system, remaking it into something more democratic, equitable, welcoming, sustainable, and just.
However, doing so takes courage. It’s much easier — anti-socialists might even say rational — to yield to powerful political-economic forces of global capitalism than it is to resist them. That’s precisely why (Not-)Churchill implied that shedding pro-socialist ideals by the time of adulthood is a sign of a working brain. It shows evidence of rational thought in response to life experience acquired in a system that’s built to snuff out that which is opposed to it.
Yet, starting out with an equitable, democratic, peaceful vision for society only to discard it after experiencing the realities of global capitalism is not evidence that experience brings wisdom. It’s evidence that feedbacks built into the current system work to weaken hearts and stifle courage.
Returning to the recast argument from above, it’s not that young people who embrace pro-socialist, egalitarian values are naïve, idealistic Scarecrows who harden into pro-capitalist Tin People as they age. A more reasonable situation is arguably that those youthful Scarecrows grow up to be Cowardly Lions. Deep down, we might all still want to live in and help build a more equitable and just society; but, because the prospect of one seems so foreign, remote, and uncertain, we are too resigned to act. In that respect, our comrades who continue to embrace, uphold, and advance prosocial and egalitarian ideals in their later lives are not, as “Churchill” claims, Scarecrows in want of brains. They, like the Cowardly Lion who eventually risks his safety and comfort to accompany Dorothy and her companions to see the Wizard of Oz, are those who have found their courage.
If we are to resist, in our time, the systems that create and reinforce racism and massive inequality and devastate ecosystems, then, like the Lion of Oz, we need to begin our own quests for courage. The good news is that we might not have far to go. As the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow discovered on their journey — and as Glinda the Good Witch reminds us in the second epigraph above — we’ve always had the power to make a better world. Once we recognize that power, it’s time to come together and get to work. For those wishing to join that collective project, we might find inspiration in a fitting quote from (Not-)Winston Churchill:
