Pragmatic politicians?
For a long time it's been assumed that our Government is just functional, actions may be a bit more or less socialist, but essentially the Government just does what is pragmatic, mainstream, reasonable. Any sort of ideology or belief is frowned upon.
But not now, and this is difficult for us, as we can't quite believe that they believe the things they do. In Britain: two-tier justice, euthanasia, abortion to birth, rape-gangs excused, mass-migration, Islamism endorsed, economy destroyed, legal process denied… These are not mistakes or errors of judgement – they are completely logical to them. The resulting deaths and destruction are a necessary inconvenience. In economics Rachel Reeves truly believes her polices will work. As in '1984', 2+2 really must be 5!
The actions of the Democrats in the US also go beyond pragmatic politics. We've seen election fraud, treason in the Russia collusion hoax, covering up the autopen-presidency, lawfare, even political murder and now the monumental $billion fraud in health and childcare perpetrated by groups reportedly mass-imported for votes and orchestrated by politicians. They are not 'social-democrats' anymore, but leftist activists. They trample the flag and seriously seek to dismantle the Constitution!
They are not just different but dangerous. They have beliefs.
Christendom is slowly discovering that actually it was built on beliefs too, but different ones. Is it the church or those outside who are recognising and celebrating this? Have we been marinated in leftist thinking for so long (from school!) that we don't even realise it? Too many pastors think it's not nice to even mention the issues above, let alone have a Biblical view on them. Few perceive the need to repent of their blindness and lack of proper care for the people of their country.
What is this belief?
The one that has been taught for the last 60 years is Marxism (or Communism when it's in use).
This is based on the idea that a class of people, the 'bourgeois' (townies) control the 'Means of Production' ie the wealth, They exploit the proletariat (the workers) and the national institutions, churches and law (Superstructure) enforce the unfair distribution of the wealth.
They also believe that history is on their side and is changing from feudalism to capitalism to egalitarianism through 'class struggle'. Being class-based it values group conformity over individual freedom.
It's view of reality is 'Dialectical Materialism', a sort of dynamic scientific-atheism. Everything is mechanistic, even people. Art is brutal not beautiful. Change is through conflict – 'vive la revolution!' - the violent defeat of the bourgeois by the proletariat. A sense of invincibility and the inevitability of victory takes hold - if it wasn't for the 'Others', the class-enemies.
Its utopia is a classless society where resources are distributed on the basis of need.
Why did it fail?
It's clear that the latter stage has never been reached. In Soviet Russia and Mao's China, wages and limited markets were tolerated after wide-scale economic collapse and millions of deaths. However they did their best to constrain freedom with a Command Economy and state-first loyalty.
It's authoritarian nature was also all too evident. There was supposed to be a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' with a 'Vanguard Party' who represented the interests of the workers. However ideological purity and discipline were emphasised because of the nasty 'counter-revolutionaries', so dissent was crushed.
The West also continued the incremental reforms that had been going on for a long time anyway, with the expansion of suffrage, economic and social well-being.
Marxism is obviously a popular idea if you don't have anything, but practically-speaking once you start earning you rather like to hold onto what you get, especially if your neighbour is a lot lazier. So it loses its appeal – unless there are pots of money held by the wealthy that you can grab. For academics it's a fruitful ideology with which to outrageously critique the culture (who are paying you).
Winston Churchill commented: Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Reinvention
Marxists spend a lot of time analysing why the townies are bad, how they retain their positions and what can be done to break their influence. In the 1930s it was acknowledged that the economic emphasis was not working out, and its ideas on constant Revolution disturbed the peace. In Italy the Marxist Gramsci was locked up by Mussolini and really wanted to mimic fascism's obviously popular success (at that time). He focussed on identifying the hidden power in society, 'hegemony', and how to take it over.
This was picked up after the war in a Germany trying to make sense of defeat. The Frankfurt School diversified their conflict-analysis (Critical Theory) from economics into all forms of media and social connection, the family, ethnicity, sex, even language itself. In all this, whatever was identified as a power structure, had to be overcome. Crucially this did not result in equality but in themselves assuming the power, or destroying what good there was.
The fruit of this in the West, softened to 'Socialism', was first in economics, the Keynesian big-state: taxes, nationalisation, welfarism. In what industry was left - unionisation and devastating strikes, even to the destruction of the host company (eg British Leyland). In the Regan & Thatcher period economies recovered with a return to 'Austrian' economics: lower taxes, incentives to be efficient and entrepreneurial, home and share ownership. Regan & Thatcher were denigrated and maligned in the media even while they orchestrated the fall of the Berlin Wall and bought prosperity.
So the 'struggle' morphed into the insidious 'long march through the institutions' which had started in the 60s, first with education (its creed is perfect for naturally rebellious but idealistic, resource-poor youth). We had student protests, 'peace' marches, 'free love', experimental communities (few lasted the test of reality). Many of these students became the media of the 80s and beyond, and the politicians and heads of institutions now.
After the economic recovery and union constraints of the 80s, leftism had to switch towards new sources of grievance, with the focus on 'political correctness', LGB rights, anti-colonialism. The climate-change issue is less about saving the planet as about punishing the 'bourgeois' West with payments to the 'proletarian' rest of the world, who they must have oppressed. This ignored the empirical facts about real sources of poverty, climate-change, gender dysphoria etc. As the left controlled the media the facts had a hard time surfacing and those revealing them faced significant persecution.
The left's views of the right
Roger Scruton was a Professor of Philosophy at Oxford. He studied the Left, reading their torturous 'word salad' literature (so we don't have to!), so is speaking with authority.
He examines these various 'academics' in his book 'Fools, Frauds and Firebrands – Thinkers of the New Left' and you eventually believe him about the sheer scale and capture of people to what are profound demonic ideologies. They are modern day Canaanites - we have to be distanced from them!
From the concluding chapter:
“Fundamental to the left's way of thinking is the linear order implied in its name. People who describe themselves as 'on the left' believe that political opinions and movements can be assembled from left to right, and that, to the extent that you are not on the left, to that extent you are on the right. At the same time, by a relentless campaign of intimidation, left-wing thinkers have sought to make it unacceptable to be on the right. As a rule they give no definition of what the 'right' consists in, nor do they explain why national socialists, fascists and economic liberals should all be included in the category.
Nevertheless, they are clear about one thing. Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument; your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience, as it has been the experience of all the dissidents I have known. If books by authors on the right are noticed by left-wing reviewers (and in the academic world left-wing reviewers are the norm) it is only in order to trash them.
All that, you might think, puts an enormous onus on left-wing thinkers to define their alternative. But looking back across the bleak landscape that I have travelled in this book I witness only negatives. Occasional lip service is paid to a future state of 'emancipation', 'equality' or 'social justice'. But those terms are seldom lifted out of the realm of abstractions, or subjected to serious examination. They are not, as a rule, used to describe an imagined social order that their advocates are prepared to justify. Instead they are given a purely negative application. They are used to condemn every mediating institution, every imperfect association, every flawed attempt that human beings might have made, to live together without violence and with due respect for law. It is as though the abstract ideal has been chosen precisely so that nothing actual could embody it.”
Nothing new
This is all of-course nothing new. Man has sought to defy the Creator, subvert His bounty and murder rivals, even from Eden. Marxism is a later form – fashioned to fit Christendom where we believe there should be equality, where personal gifting and prosperity is God-given and should be shared. We believe in kindness, justice and truth. We also acknowledge guilt for selfishness and failure. These are all weaponised or subverted by Marxism and like excessive union activism, destroy the very source of human flourishing. We can see this as the work of the Enemy – seeking to take authority over all creation, exploiting the visceral emotions of greed, envy, hate and lust for power.
In part 2 we’ll look at how this is being played out in the West today and an alternative more Christian philosophy.
#buildacountryyouwanttolivein
