April 29
To Bradley Birzer and his blogpost that gives a completely negative critique of Marxism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative website
There really isn't that much difference between the above critique of Marx and other conservative criticisms. According to those criticisms, Marx had nothing of value to teach us. That he seems to be a godless person who misunderstands having been disillusioned with capitalism and thinks that he has discovered a way to utopia. However, the history of nations that have tried his ideas like the Soviet Union, China, Laos, Cuba, etc shows otherwise.
The above critique is different from the one given by Martin Luther King Jr (see pg 92-95 of http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ows/seminars/aahistory/Pilgrimage.pdf ). Like the above criticism, King rejects Marx's materialism and he seemed to have strongly associated the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union with Marxism and he rejected that. He also rejected Marx's relative morality though I am not sure that that didn't come more from the Soviet Union than from Marx. I like much of King's critique of Marxism but he errs when he seems to identify it with Bolshevism--the Soviet Union's Communism.
But what we should note about King's critique of Marx is the value he sees in Marx's writings and the criticisms he has of Capitalism. And that King believed that we should pursue what is best from both Marxism and Capitalism. For whereas one ideology forgets that life is individual, the other forgets that it is social.
So what value did King see in Marxism? King agreed with the William Temple, a late Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that Communism was able to identify and cling to certain Christian truths. Those truths included waiting for a utopia and wanting social justice. And here we should note that while Marx reduced the overall theme of history to that of class struggle, it is obvious that class struggle plays a staring role in the saga of man's inhumanity to man. And it should be obvious that man is incapable of creating any kind of utopia. Despite that, Marx clearly shows how Capitalism objectifies labor power and makes workers into disposable objects for profit.
King also notes how Capitalism causes us to focus on success in terms of material goods instead of human goodness toward each other. It isn't that there are no capitalists who don't help, it is that the system trains people to perceive and treat others in the world as expendable things.
One more point should be made. While Christian Capitalists rightfully fault Marx for believing in a utopia, they also condemn themselves for the same belief when they defiantly claim that Capitalism can be neither replaced nor improved on. The only difference is that Marx wrongfully believed in an absolute utopia on earth while such Capitalists wrongly believe in a relative one.
One other point should be made. That the list of nations trying some form of Marxism includes far more nations that the ones listed above. Those are nations where the US, and sometimes some allies, has supported or orchestrated coups where a democratically elected leftist in government were replaced by brutal tyrants and dictators.
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April 30
To Russell Kirk and his blogpost on a 10-point description of Conservatism. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
The above description of conservatism by Russell Kirk contains both ambiguities and contradictions.
Contradictions include not favoring 'absolute political dogmas' while celebrating America's rejection of all forms of collectivism. Another conservative contradiction exists in the expressed disdain for the centralization of power while maintaining privilege and status and allowing power to collect in the private sector. Here, a bit shortsightedness and overreaction to the Soviet Union back then might explain the inconsistency. Kirk seems to say that conservatives only object to the consolidation of power in the public sector while, through the maintaining of privilege and status, allowing power to consolidate in the private sector. For Kirk should realize that in Capitalism power follows wealth, the consolidation of wealth leads to what is expressly feared: the consolidation of power as seen in oligarchy.
Ambiguity exists in determining whose moral law will set the standard and serve as the code for society. In addition, what are the specific differences between improving the world and seeking any dreaded utopian dream. Or when Kirk describes Conservatives as protecting everybody's right to keep what is theirs, how does he determine what is someone's property when it comes to fair wages?
Much of what Kirk wrote here was in revulsion to the Soviet Union. But how much about the Soviet Union did Kirk really understand? Did he understand that many socialists themselves opposed the Soviet Union? Did he understand that according to some socialists, Lenin and/or Stalin were rejected? Would that have made a difference in what he wrote?
Despite the above, more problems with conservatism can be found in its working definition rather than its ideal definition. For conservatism's working definition amounts to conservatives looking solely to the past to understand today's world and how to solve its problems. Such works against the conservative principle of accepting the universal law of change.
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May 1
To Rev. Ben Johnson and his blogpost that challenged France’s President Macron’s call for change in the US during his speech before a joint session of Congress. This appeared in the Acton Blog.
Though I have to agree with Rev. Johnson's objections to Macron's approach to fake news, Johnson is off the mark when he criticizes Macron's call to the US to follow the climate agreement. Yes, there have been problems with the current approach to addressing climate change in Germany and the UK. But what does that mean? Does that mean that we give up on addressing climate change? Does it mean if government cannot "get it right" with their first approach, that gov't will never get it right? The conservative response to Social Justice issues, and climate change is one of those issues, is to reduce reality to what favors their perspective. This includes ignoring other realities. The reality being ignored by Rev. Johnson is the future reality if we do not change. And that future reality is becoming more and more certain as we observe either the disappearance or breakup of Arctic and Antarctic ice. It becomes more certain as we see the continued melting of the permafrost and the release of methane gas. It is observed as we see the rise in sea levels increase at a faster pace. And it is observed as we see global temperatures rising. And those are not the only places we see climate change coming.
Rev. Johnson also misses the mark when he criticizes Macron's call for regulated markets. Johnson seems unaware that the stats he cites to challenge economic inequality are inadequate. Wealth disparity has been growing within nations (see https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/jan/22/inequality-gap-widens-as-42-people-hold-same-wealth-as-37bn-poorest and http://www.austaxpolicy.com/news/world-inequality-report-2018/ and http://www.oecd.org/social/inequality.htm ). Citing only the work of a conservative think-tank is problematic when the results are not found by other sources. What Oxfam observed about extreme poverty being reduced does not not apply to other levels of poverty. In addition, where poverty is reduced the most in the world is China, which hardly has a free,unregulated market as well as the environmental growing pains that comes with their reduction in poverty, and India, which has problems with increases in slavery. Thus, whether even extreme poverty is being reduced around the world the way it is reduced in China and India is debatable.
It's about time that Acton should come clean in terms of its pushing neoliberal capitalism and who that kind of capitalism benefits the most. The growing wealth disparity in the world indicates that it isn't the people at the bottom.
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