Posted by
CRB on Friday, August 28, 2009 10:56:14 AM
Today’s Marxist movement is not a singular movement. Like any set of ideas, the movement has morphed over time so that the various threads, while they have much in common, are often dramatically opposed to each other.
The movement has seen, at least in the United States, three distinct movements. The first is the idealization of equality that Marxism was thought to bring. It was believed that the principles were “biblical” and applicable to solve the human condition. This optimism, a part of the optimism of 19th c. postmillennial ideals – proposing that we can though ideas, theology, and progress, develop a better world – that created the social justice movement and other do-gooder practices. It finally culminated in Prohibition, an attempt to rid society of those things that do great harm. Prohibition gained momentum came in because of the equality of the suffrage movement and the power of a new voting block, a large percentage of which was driven by certain Christian ideals. But Prohibition failed because the human condition is not driven by the externals of live but the internals of human depravity.
The second movement of US Marxism was the Great Society. FDR made economic equality the solution to social justice. When he, almost quoting Hegel and also clarifying the desire of Marx, said that the “necessitous man is not free” he asserted two salient points. The first was that freedom is determined by one’s ability to fulfill one’s needs, and that need limits freedom. The second is that goods and power must be redistributed in order to fulfill that equality. This socialism, moderated though it was, saw itself fulfilled further in LBJ’s Great Society that was supposed to end poverty. Again these economic Marxists made the error of assuming that dealing with external influences is adequate to address the human condition.
The US began a third movement in the 1970s with the rise in popularity of the far more radical anti-military views of George McGovern. Now, McGovern was not near so left as Bill Clinton or Barak Obama. After all, McGovern did vote affirmatively on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, a point that probably lost him some liberal anti-war support. (It’s almost as though Hillary Clinton suffered the same affliction.) But it seems a turn that, though not perfectly consistent with his positions, that McGovern began the movement which grew into today’s anti-unilateralism. That is, the US can and should engage enemies and threats only through the venue of the UN and not under its own authority. The US is, and should behave as part of the world community and not as an independent, self-existing nation.
McGovern himself, on social policy, appears to some, today, to be more consistent with some branches of conservatism. As one blogger states:
Though the party’s social liberals—feminists, abortion supporters, and gay-rights activists—have indeed consolidated their power, they often did so in alliance with the party’s right wing: the pro-business, Southern-accented Democratic Leadership Council. It was a DLC-run party that denied antiabortion Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania a speaking slot at the 1992 Democratic convention. McGovern, on the other hand, was the last Democratic presidential nominee to select a pro-life running mate. (In fact, he chose two: Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton, who withdrew from the ticket when his history of psychiatric treatment came to light, and Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver. McGovern’s own position was that abortion was a matter properly left to the states.) While the social Left worked out a modus vivendi with the DLC, the antiwar Left steadily lost out to humanitarian interventionists. Madeleine Albright, not George McGovern, remains the face of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy.
Still, the non-interventionist McGovern anti-war thread remains strong in the agenda of today’s Left. The popular anti-war behavior of today’s grass-roots support of the Democratic Party is conveniently partisan (there were no protests against the Democratic president when troops were sent into Kosovo, or when sides were taken in Somalia) and his influence against this nation’s use of military power remains. Again, it may not be consistent with his personal position as he served well in WWII, but still his influence remains.
The McGovern thread has followed through the liberal administrations of Clinton and Obama. Both of these either (Clinton) used the US military through the UN, or (Clinton and Obama) treated national defense, especially intelligence gathering, as something to be done away with. While US deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq continue with no noticeable decline, we hear nothing in the mainstream media that President Obama has somehow failed to support the troops by giving the authority to win. Instead we hear nothing.
Militarism is not the only measure of liberalism and leftist thought, but since the Reagan years is has been the loud cry of the left. During the campaign we was called a warmonger, but as a matter of record made less use of US troops than any president since, of either party.
Opposition to a nation’s military practices was one of Lenin’s revolutionary strategies. And while I do not believe violent revolution is the method of today’s government Leftist, change in government is. The criticism of this nation’s military engagements has allowed the election of this nation’s most left president yet. The Marxism of President Obama, with the election foundation garnered from the momentum of the anti-war McGovern ideals, may be the fourth turn US Marxist thought.
This turn seems, though, to be away from Marxism in particular. That sounds inconsistent at first, but follow. Marxism always leaves a mess behind. It depends upon conflict in order to institute solutions. But then there is always another perceived elitism to confront. We all know the current ones – profit, property ownership, political property, and personal sexual identity. But there is a new conversation going on and the result is statism.
The motivation seems to be that the Left is tired of the fight and wants to solve things once and for all. This retreat is to some core principles of Hegel, the influencer of Marx, whose system created the most singularly coherent system since the synthesis of the medieval philosophers. But instead of the church being dominant in the Kingdom, God and the church have been replaced with the state, and any existing church is to serve at the behest of the government. The government is now the final arbiter of morality and ethics – all social policy.
This new cold war is against the advance of Marxism and its new Hegelian incarnation. But instead of an enemy in another nation that is guided by another leadership, we face an internal struggle that will do nothing but weaken our nation if it is not handled well.
The problem we face is that conservatism, both the social and the pragmatic sides of the movement, is our constant appeal to classic liberalism. That means personal responsibility for your self, in an open system. The problem with this is that the Left gains the upper hand with its willingness to address social issues. And when the conservative attempts to resolve social issues they end up trying to do so with the mechanism of the modern liberal. As a matter of degree they both practice some level of social control, and both reject theological influence in the process. The only difference is how far and fast each proceed in their goals.
What the future holds is unknown. When it comes to the driving philosophical premises, I am tempted to think that the Left cannot be stopped. Then again, when those under President Obama make their appeal to the media control methods of Hugo Chavez, one has hope. This new conservative revolution against statism may be able to hold back the Left.
Cross-posted in Philosophy for Christians.