What to blame: Marxism or Liberalism?

[JurisPrudens]

I’m posting this because I feel like the philosophical worldview of many people here on the forum does not exactly correspond to reality.

Well, the big issue is, what political philosophy to blame for the modern moral decay of the modern world: Marxism or Liberalism?

I see that many, especially American Catholics, blame Marxism for everything, for every wrong step their country has taken. They think it is Marxism, with its ideological atheism and materialism, that is responsible for the modern moral relativism and secularism.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m Russian and I can see the effect the decades of materialistic regime have had on the mass conscience and moral philosophy.

However, I should point out, that Marxist atheism, with all its militancy, still had a quasi-religious dimension in it.

Marxist worldview necessarily includes belief in the objective laws which govern the Universe. The history is teleological. In their view, the society moves through the history of conflicts to the future of “eternal” communist society - a very “Christianity-style” idea. Morality in Marxism is objective. Yes, the ideology is atheistic, but it is based on a traditional religious worldview!

On the other hand, Liberalism, especially in “Libertarian” incarnation, is based on a chaotic materialism. It thinks of human beings as “atoms”, free to join and relate to each other in any possible configuration. There are no objective laws - everything is dependent on the wishes and desires of “atom”-individuals. Modern liberalism is agnostic - people don’t believe in God not because of some conflicting ideology, but because they simply “don’t care”. People think of themselves as the criterion of truth.

Finally - there is no teleology in Liberalism. The society just develops in quantity, growing bigger economically. With constant equalization of people, with breaking the social and moral boundaries, the entropy of social system is constantly growing. The society becomes more and more amorphous, finally merging into one big grey mass.

What do you think?

 

[Latias]

I’m posting this because I feel like the philosophical worldview of many people here on the forum does not exactly correspond to reality.

Well, the big issue is, what political philosophy to blame for the modern moral decay of the modern world: Marxism or Liberalism?

I see that many, especially American Catholics, blame Marxism for everything, for every wrong step their country has taken. They think it is Marxism, with its ideological atheism and materialism, that is responsible for the modern moral relativism and secularism.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m Russian and I can see the effect the decades of materialistic regime have had on the mass conscience and moral philosophy.

I suppose that conservatives want to capitalize on the success of popular anti-communism while not attributing anything bad to liberalism, whose positive legacy includes upholding civil liberties and fighting for civil rights.

Maybe the problems you see can be ascribed Khrushchevite revisionism as opposed to generic Marxism. BTW, most Russians actually like Stalin, but not people such as Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

 

[meltzerboy]

I think the present moral decay, primarily with regard to excessive greed and selfishness, is due mainly to our current economic system, which too heavily focuses on cutthroat capitalism without a social conscience. It is capitalism run amok which is primarily responsible for most of our moral ills more so than liberalism. The latter in fact reflects our social conscience. Marxism is not relevant to our government or economy.

 

[GEddie]

Depends where you are.

In NA, Marxism never gained much of a hearing. It was always considered the “public enemy number one.”

Here, Liberalism was the driving force.

Marxism had more of a fan base in some of the European countries, where the young generations were more philosophically minded than in NA, and in parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia, due to a massive proselytizing effort by the then CCCP.

In other nations, a melange of liberal and Marxist ideas took hold.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[St_Francis]

JP, what you describe as liberalism sounds more like what Americans would call “classical liberalism,” which vaguely relates to what we call conservatism. Actually, all these terms have gone through such permutations that using these words is a set of very rough approximations.

What I think you hear is that a lot of Americans equate liberalism with what happened in the 1960s, and a lot of that counter-revolution was actually funded and directed by the Soviets and very happily continued and built upon by some who are currently called liberals. So to a large set of Americans, current (post-60s) liberalism is a smokescreen for creeping communism, a type of Fabian socialism.

I don’t know about the objectivity of Soviet communism. They went back and forth on abortion for the perceived national benefit and treated people very badly. It was still a very twisted way of thinking, even if it was teleologically-based (which I’m not sure I agree with).

 

[Latias]

I think the present moral decay, primarily with regard to excessive greed and selfishness, is due mainly to our current economic system, which too heavily focuses on cutthroat capitalism without a social conscience. It is capitalism run amok which is primarily responsible for most of our moral ills more so than liberalism. The latter in fact reflects our social conscience. Marxism is not relevant to our government or economy.

I would normally ignore you remark about capitalism being inherently greedy and selfish because that seems to be excessively idealistic (about a potential system of capitalism and surrounding culture that isn’t so materialistic). Also, people are so committed to capitalism, that such rhetoric would be unlikely to persuaded anyone, and people prefer to blame bugbears such as Marxism and liberalism for everything as opposed to be critical towards capitalism (and its supporting morality and culture),

However, you are right.

Many in these three nations believe the enormous transformations that have taken place since the demise of the Soviet Union have had negative consequences for their societies. In particular, majorities in all three say the changes since 1991 have had a bad influence on the standard of living, the way people in society treat one another, law and order, and public morality.

Overall, Lithuanians are less negative than Ukrainians and Russians about the impact of the post-Soviet era. For example, majorities in the latter two nations say the changes have negatively affected national pride, while only 30% of Lithuanians hold this view.

Even so, Lithuanians are generally more negative about the impact of these changes today than they were in 1991, when the Times Mirror Center survey asked about the dramatic shifts that were underway. Conversely, Russians and Ukrainians have actually become slightly less negative since 1991, when they were even more likely than they are today to believe the changes were having a bad impact on their societies.

http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2011/12/Anniv-of-Fall-of-Soviet-Union-20110038.png

pewglobal.org/2011/12/05/confidence-in-democracy-and-capitalism-wanes-in-former-soviet-union/

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m posting this because I feel like the philosophical worldview of many people here on the forum does not exactly correspond to reality.

Well, the big issue is, what political philosophy to blame for the modern moral decay of the modern world: Marxism or Liberalism?

I see that many, especially American Catholics, blame Marxism for everything, for every wrong step their country has taken. They think it is Marxism, with its ideological atheism and materialism, that is responsible for the modern moral relativism and secularism.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m Russian and I can see the effect the decades of materialistic regime have had on the mass conscience and moral philosophy.

However, I should point out, that Marxist atheism, with all its militancy, still had a quasi-religious dimension in it.

Marxist worldview necessarily includes belief in the objective laws which govern the Universe. The history is teleological. In their view, the society moves through the history of conflicts to the future of “eternal” communist society - a very “Christianity-style” idea. Morality in Marxism is objective. Yes, the ideology is atheistic, but it is based on a traditional religious worldview!

On the other hand, Liberalism, especially in “Libertarian” incarnation, is based on a chaotic materialism. It thinks of human beings as “atoms”, free to join and relate to each other in any possible configuration. There are no objective laws - everything is dependent on the wishes and desires of “atom”-individuals. Modern liberalism is agnostic - people don’t believe in God not because of some conflicting ideology, but because they simply “don’t care”. People think of themselves as the criterion of truth.

Finally - there is no teleology in Liberalism. The society just develops in quantity, growing bigger economically. With constant equalization of people, with breaking the social and moral boundaries, the entropy of social system is constantly growing. The society becomes more and more amorphous, finally merging into one big grey mass.

What do you think?

I think it is difficult to truly separate Marxism, Leninism, Nietzschean philosophy, classic liberalism and liberalism as presently “practiced”.

Marx does seem to have believed in an objective reality. It was faulty, of course, a sort of “clockwork universe” of social and economic progression; a quasi-Darwinism. But was it really “objective”? I don’t regard it as such because Marxism was entirely the spun thread of minds, bearing, at the time, no relationship to objective reality other than the mere observation that conditions among much of the working class were dismal. Lenin, on the other hand, was fundamentally subjective. While paying lip service to Marx, pragmatic and situational decisions made by elites (most especially himself) was the real underpinning of his words and actions.

In that regard, Lenin was more Nietzschean than Marxist. He appended “doctrines” to Marxism that he invented out of the whole cloth and sometimes ignored his own invented maxims.

Which is not to say that Nietzsche somehow invented or even promoted the “Death of God”, and thus objective standards for human actions. For him it was an observation of where he thought society had gone. He even seemed to regret it. But regardless, in the absence of any objective truth to which men adhered, all standards were then subjective as a practical matter.

In other words, Nietzsche gave a name to the failure of accepted objective moral standards and further developed the consequences of it, philosophically.

Classic liberalism was definitely founded on objective principles. Modern “liberalism” is a sort of mishmash of subjectivism and Marxist redistributionism…a mixture guaranteed to encourage moral chaos and, for that matter, a totalitarian mindset. Why totalitarian? Because my subjective “truth” is going to clash with yours, virtually automatically, particularly when it comes to redistributing your goods to me.

So, CAF participants are not entirely wrong in attributing current moral degeneration to Marxism. After all, it was atheistic and materialistic to the extreme and deplored all Christian standards of behavior. But combined with an ever more radical subjectivism espoused by Lenin and explicated by Nietzsche and adopted by many because they perceived it served their desires well, it made a virtual witches’ brew of immorality and self-aggrandizement.

But Marx was, after all, heavily influenced by Darwin. Lenin was somewhat influenced by Marx, but had a very subjective view of things, in reality, and Nietzsche popularized the concept, particularly in Europe.

But let me add this, or at least invite thought about it. Did Marx or Engels or Hegel or Darwin or Lenin or Nietzsche really spring, like Athene, fully armed from the head of some Zeus? I don’t think they did. I think they sprung from a previous development.

I’ll catch flak for saying this, but intellectually, I think the whole thing derived from Protestantism. It was a gradual process, but one has to really think about the real core of Protestantism. What is it? It’s subjectivism pretending to be based on the objective reality of the Bible. Calvin could posit a God he thought surely existed and was revealed in the Bible; a stern, almost malicious God. Luther could posit a libertarian sort of God. Every “Bible believing Christian” (so self-styled) invents his own doctrine and morality from the same source, resulting in a chaotic melange of “truths”.

Probably out of room here. Will continue.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Continued.

So, I do not think of modern radical subjectivism as something “new”. It isn’t new. It’s as old as the Reformation, and, in truth, is older even than that. It’s fundamentally pagan, which is not at all new.

When we think about paganism, we think of it in terms of misbehaving gods, idol worship and so on. We ordinarily don’t realize the core of it is (and has always been) the relationship of God and man reversed. The fundamental principle of paganism is to bend the will of the gods to my own will. If I sacrifice a dozen bulls to Zeus, he will grant me victory in battle. Failures are explained by the hostile intervention of, say, Ares, who supports another party like a politician supports a donor, and the momentary inattention of Zeus. Witchcraft is an offshoot of the pagan principle. If I accurately repeat an incantation of power, I gain more power than is given to humans; by some spirit or other, oftentimes a dark one.

It is no surprise that we are seeing a revival of overt paganism and witchcraft in our own era. Indeed, they are overtly what so many of us are attempting with the God of the Christians, without admitting that we’re trying to bend God to our own wills.

I could go on with this, but I’ll yield the floor at this point.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think the present moral decay, primarily with regard to excessive greed and selfishness, is due mainly to our current economic system, which too heavily focuses on cutthroat capitalism without a social conscience. It is capitalism run amok which is primarily responsible for most of our moral ills more so than liberalism. The latter in fact reflects our social conscience. Marxism is not relevant to our government or economy.

But capitalism itself is a tabula rasa; a blank slate upon which people write many things. It is nothing but what people would do if allowed to do it. But in practice it has many accretions on it; some good and some not so good. And it varies from place to place and from time to time, precisely because it’s a blank slate upon which a given people write this or that.

Can it truly be said that allowing a person to do what he will automatically results in throat cutting and oppression, greed and selfishness. Certainly it will if the person is motivated by greed and selfishness. But that’s not peculiar to capitalism by any means. Well regulated capitalism might, indeed, be the closest thing to a cure in our modern world because it allows (and at its best encourages) at least competition between and among free persons, which will always be much more likely to result in a reasonably just outcome than a society in which a dictator, a bureaucracy, a monarchy, determines outcomes based on who is favored and who is not. An out-of-favor person in a capitalist society has a much greater chance of succeeding in his ambitions than he would if opposed by an all-powerful Sultan or commisar.

But getting back to greed and selfishness. Can we say that a modern, relatively free society encourages it more than one in which all pathways are decreed? History does not give us an affirmative answer to that. It seems, instead, the contrary is true.

Greed and selfishness are subjective motivations. Why, we might ask, is subjectivism so much in charge nowadays, and in far more ways than in material acquisition. It’s the absence of adherence to objective moral standards.

Returning to the subject matter of my previous post, what was so different between the mores of, say, ancient Hebrews and those of, say, those who consulted the Oracle at Delphi? Well, in the latter, one paid one’s offering and were given directives by one who came up with them out of absolutely nowhere. The oracle needed to give no explanations. She WAS the explanation; the only one there was.

The Hebrews, on the other hand, had, very early on, objective standards; commandments carved in stone. Why carved in stone? Because they were to govern without cavil and re-interpretation, and forever. They were objective standards of behavior. Priests and rabbis added, added, added, seemingly endlessly to those fundamental principles, but always in a way consistent with those that were carved in stone and could not be changed

And the Lord of Hosts could not be “bribed” as Zeus or Moloch could. He was ineffable, and unchanging. The sacrifice of an unjust man would not sway Him. Interesting that knowing the name of a man or a god was thought to give a certain power over that man or god. Since the Lord’s name could not be spoken and was represented by consonants of indefinite meaning, no power could be gained by men over Him.

And so, today we see subjectivists rail against the exhibit of the Ten Commandments, presently on public property but perhaps soon anywhere. The reason given is that such display promotes a particular religion. But is that really it? Since all manner of disparate Christians and Jews at least give them lip service, they certainly don’t promote a particular religion. Or is there something unnerving to those who prefer their own notions of things, about moral commandments carved in stone as if intended for all people through all time, thus profoundly challenging subjective mores?

I think there is.

 

[Neofight]

Why blame Marxists or liberals, or anyone?

Prayer feels much better than blame!

 

[meltzerboy]

But capitalism itself is a tabula rasa; a blank slate upon which people write many things. It is nothing but what people would do if allowed to do it. But in practice it has many accretions on it; some good and some not so good. And it varies from place to place and from time to time, precisely because it’s a blank slate upon which a given people write this or that.

Can it truly be said that allowing a person to do what he will automatically results in throat cutting and oppression, greed and selfishness. Certainly it will if the person is motivated by greed and selfishness. But that’s not peculiar to capitalism by any means. Well regulated capitalism might, indeed, be the closest thing to a cure in our modern world because it allows (and at its best encourages) at least competition between and among free persons, which will always be much more likely to result in a reasonably just outcome than a society in which a dictator, a bureaucracy, a monarchy, determines outcomes based on who is favored and who is not. An out-of-favor person in a capitalist society has a much greater chance of succeeding in his ambitions than he would if opposed by an all-powerful Sultan or commisar.

But getting back to greed and selfishness. Can we say that a modern, relatively free society encourages it more than one in which all pathways are decreed? History does not give us an affirmative answer to that. It seems, instead, the contrary is true.

Greed and selfishness are subjective motivations. Why, we might ask, is subjectivism so much in charge nowadays, and in far more ways than in material acquisition. It’s the absence of adherence to objective moral standards.

Returning to the subject matter of my previous post, what was so different between the mores of, say, ancient Hebrews and those of, say, those who consulted the Oracle at Delphi? Well, in the latter, one paid one’s offering and were given directives by one who came up with them out of absolutely nowhere. The oracle needed to give no explanations. She WAS the explanation; the only one there was.

The Hebrews, on the other hand, had, very early on, objective standards; commandments carved in stone. Why carved in stone? Because they were to govern without cavil and re-interpretation, and forever. They were objective standards of behavior. Priests and rabbis added, added, added, seemingly endlessly to those fundamental principles, but always in a way consistent with those that were carved in stone and could not be changed

And so, today we see subjectivists rail against the exhibit of the Ten Commandments, presently on public property but perhaps soon anywhere. The reason given is that such display promotes a particular religion. But is that really it? Since all manner of disparate Christians and Jews at least give them lip service, they certainly don’t promote a particular religion. Or is there something unnerving to those who prefer their own notions of things, about moral commandments carved in stone as if intended for all people through all time, thus profoundly challenging subjective mores?

I think there is.

With regard to capitalism, I think there may be an inherent tendency toward excess and selfishness since the structure and process of capitalism is driven by competition. I do not agree this system is a tabula rasa, as you characterize it. The capitalist mentality is instilled in us from early on in school where children compete for grades and for the teacher’s and other children’s attention in academics and sports both inside and outside the classroom. I agree, however, that the capitalist economy need not devolve into selfish, cutthroat competition, a mentality of win at any cost, yet the seeds of this kind of immoral, or amoral, attitude are always there, ready to be cultivated. Whether or not capitalism is, despite its (potential) faults, still better than the alternatives is another, albeit related, issue; but since it is capitalism which many countries, including the U.S., practice, it is this economic system that I have pointed to.

While I have some agreement relative to your discussion of capitalism, the second part of your commentary regarding moral objectivity vs. moral relativism, I disagree with: not so much your discussion concerning the objective standards of moral behavior inherent in Judaism, but rather your application of objective moral values to the public arena. We in the U.S. live in a diverse, pluralistic, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. And so, while the Ten Commandments may seem to us of the Judeo-Christian faith tradition, innocuous enough and even beneficial to the social welfare of all peoples, I can understand why some might take offense at the display of this monument endorsing a religious tradition that they themselves do not hold. The very first commandment proclaims the existence of G-d, which not all people subscribe to. Then it goes on to say that this G-d is above all others, which denies multi-god pagan theologies. The Sabbath is then mentioned: one day of rest among the seven is mandatory. This not only opposes those who do not subscribe to the Judeo-Christian belief but also brings up the issue of which day: Saturday, Sunday, or perhaps Friday according to Muslim belief. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” while written in stone and admirable on the surface, must certainly be carefully interpreted; but how so and according to which religion: Judaism, Catholicism, or Quakerism? Same for “Thou shalt not steal.” And so on. Even here, then, objective morality which is carved in stone is not so objective after all, even for those who essentially adhere to its religious and moral content.

 

[meltzerboy]

Why blame Marxists or liberals, or anyone?

Prayer feels much better than blame!

Amen. Unfortunately, many people love the blaming game, so long as it is the other who is to blame.

 

[multitude]

I’ll catch flak for saying this, but intellectually, I think the whole thing derived from Protestantism. It was a gradual process, but one has to really think about the real core of Protestantism. What is it? It’s subjectivism pretending to be based on the objective reality of the Bible. Calvin could posit a God he thought surely existed and was revealed in the Bible; a stern, almost malicious God. Luther could posit a libertarian sort of God. Every “Bible believing Christian” (so self-styled) invents his own doctrine and morality from the same source, resulting in a chaotic melange of “truths”.

Protestantism is a much older idea than Marxism, Nietzschean, Liberalism, etc. It’s not out of the question to believe that all these ideas will find a common origin in Protestantism. But it’s all based on the rationalism ideology after all. Marxism is basically an atheistic variant of Christianity. Nietzsche is a response/backlash to Protestantism, whilst Liberalism is a response/backlash to Marxism.

Similarly we now see newer ideas that are just offshoots of this. The gender war is one instance. Feminism is an offshoot of Marxism, and Men’s Rights is akin to the backlash of Liberalism against Marxism.

Also, IMO, Nietzsche didn’t really know what he was attacking when he said that “God is dead”. Christianity and Christian philosophy was so devoid of any real order by that point. And yeah, thanks to Protestantism. It’s almost a given that somebody was going to attack Christianity at that point and it looks to me like he decided to step up to the plate. Nietzsche was also a fan of Buddhism, like seemingly every other intellectual out there, but they forget that Buddhism finds its roots and premises in reincarnation religion. Ultimately if such intellectuals are going to piggyback philosophies, they ought to know its roots and premises, and something tells me that they don’t believe in reincarnation. Not for a second.

I think that most people have just forgotten how to pray. Instead they’d rather intellectualize everything and play the blame game. No wonder why God will never reveal His secrets to learned intellectual men. There’s a reason why the Blessed Virgin Mary will only ever appear to children, the innocent, the simple. Knowledge is usually a road to perdition. Gnosticism is a heresy after all.

Marxism, Liberalism, etc? Meh.

 

[St_Francis]

I think the present moral decay, primarily with regard to excessive greed and selfishness, is due mainly to our current economic system, which too heavily focuses on cutthroat capitalism without a social conscience. It is capitalism run amok which is primarily responsible for most of our moral ills more so than liberalism. The latter in fact reflects our social conscience. Marxism is not relevant to our government or economy.

I must disagree. I think greed and selfishness are kind of built into fallen human nature and will come out whenever it can if the individual does not choose to mitigate these tendencies within himself. It seems like there were plenty of greedy and selfish people running the Soviet nations…

I think what is necessary is to understand that selfishness and greed will always be something we must watch out for, and that economic structures need to account for that. Right now in the US we have crony capitalism–greed for money and greed for power seem to be working hand-in-hand.

Thus, any system which puts into too-close contact money and power (ie, crony capitalism, communism) seems to devolve into something we don’t want.

 

[Latias]

I must disagree. I think greed and selfishness are kind of built into fallen human nature and will come out whenever it can if the individual does not choose to mitigate these tendencies within himself. It seems like there were plenty of greedy and selfish people running the Soviet nations…

I think what is necessary is to understand that selfishness and greed will always be something we must watch out for, and that economic structures need to account for that. Right now in the US we have crony capitalism–greed for money and greed for power seem to be working hand-in-hand.

Thus, any system which puts into too-close contact money and power (ie, crony capitalism, communism) seems to devolve into something we don’t want.

There was also plenty of greedy and selfish people in NATO countries during the Cold War. It is not a unique phenomenon confined to the Soviet Union. Greedy and selfish people are not some KGB/FSB plot to immiscerate people in capitalist countries, and they did not just suddenly appear after the fall the Soviet Union and capitalist countries suddenly transmuted into “crony capitalist” countries. I object to the notion of “crony capitalism” since that is an obvious means of trying to distinguish from some pure, idealistic capitalism from some degenerated form today; furthermore, there does not seem to be any significant pressure to reform capitalism.​

I will proffer a radical suggestion: a lack of genuine egalitarian values causes perceived moral decay and personal alienation.

This was from a previous exchange:

Even a spiritual epiphany can’t get you to embrace the most prime principle of the equal value of every person … to not make value judgments on the individuals whether they may likely live a good life or a life of suffering, or that they may be part of a disenfranchised group or a privileged one … the principle is not to guarantee an equal economic reality to all, or to even pretend that everybody is equal in any real sense, we are not. The principle demands full equality ONLY in the eye’s of God. Full equality even of the sinner as well as the saint. If one translates this principle to a secular person then it is embodied in the blindness (color, gender, class, nationality) of the Law.

My response:

I will say that such a principle of equity is completely useless if it does not translate into beneficial personal conduct or policies that ameliorate human suffering. Instead, such “equality” seems to be rather indifferent to one’s material circumstances and does not foster sympathy and natural benevolence.

Also, this is from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion where the character Philo discusses the influence of religious morality on public conduct.

And so will all religion, said Philo, except the philosophical and rational kind. Your reasonings are more easily eluded than my facts. The inference is not just, because finite and temporary rewards and punishments have so great influence, that therefore such as are infinite and eternal must have so much greater. Consider, I beseech you, the attachment which we have to present things, and the little concern which we discover for objects so remote and uncertain. When divines [religious clergy] are declaiming against the common behaviour and conduct of the world, they always represent this principle as the strongest imaginable (which indeed it is); and describe almost all human kind as lying under the influence of it, and sunk into the deepest lethargy and unconcern about their religious interests. Yet these same divines, when they refute their speculative antagonists, suppose the motives of religion to be so powerful, that, without them, it were impossible for civil society to subsist; nor are they ashamed of so palpable a contradiction. It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural honesty and benevolence has more effect on men’s conduct, than the most pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems. A man’s natural inclination works incessantly upon him; it is for ever present to the mind, and mingles itself with every view and consideration: whereas religious motives, where they act at all, operate only by starts and bounds; and it is scarcely possible for them to become altogether habitual to the mind. The force of the greatest gravity, say the philosophers, is infinitely small, in comparison of that of the least impulse: yet it is certain, that the smallest gravity will, in the end, prevail above a great impulse; because no strokes or blows can be repeated with such constancy as attraction and gravitation.

 

[Ridgerunner]

With regard to capitalism, I think there may be an inherent tendency toward excess and selfishness since the structure and process of capitalism is driven by competition.

While I have some agreement relative to your discussion of capitalism, the second part of your commentary regarding moral objectivity vs. moral relativism, I disagree with: The commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” while written in stone and admirable on the surface, must certainly be carefully interpreted; but how so and according to which religion: Judaism, Catholicism, or Quakerism? Same for “Thou shalt not steal.” And so on. Even here, then, objective morality which is carved in stone is not so objective after all, even for those who essentially adhere to its religious and moral content.

But the current worship of relativism and diversity is exactly a rejection of the very notion of objective truth. While the “public” in which the Founding Fathers were situated looked to biblical Christianity for its “truths”, (not entirely shared by the Founders) the Founders very clearly intended the public mores to be based on objective truths, not subjective notions of it. The Constitution itself, as well as the Declaration of Independence make that very clear…“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

So, among many of our elites today, that is simply rejected, not in particulars only, but they reject the whole concept that there can be certitudes that ought to guide human conduct. That moral chaos ensues can be regarded as inevitable. Can we expect legal chaos to follow? I think we can, and we have seen it, particularly as regards life issues. I cannot, for example, hunt down a copperhead for the purpose of killing it, but I can cut down the face of a living baby in order to “harvest” its brain for other uses. I can legally abort a viable fetus and kill it, but if I beat its mother, thus causing an abortion, I can be charged with murder or manslaughter.

I would dispute the suggestion that attempts to interpret accepted truths necessarily leads to diverse views. I am no Talmudic scholar and know little about it. But it is my impression that those who write glosses on it are very careful to ensure that those extensions are consistent not only with the original text but with the accepted interpretations that followed, notwithstanding that disputations may occur in the “outer edges” of the discourse. Catholic doctrine is, as well, replete with glosses, commentaries and interpretations of the more basic doctrines. Catholic literature throughout the centuries has posed this or that further thought or interpretation. Some are ultimately accepted and some are rejected. But always, the effort is to remain faithful to the original, applying it to different circumstances.

There is nothing wrong with enforced standards of conduct as such, even if we do not always agree with them, intellectually. They can even aid a person in solidifying his own moral system, much as many people in Eastern Europe did during the Soviet occupation. The big question is whether those standards can reasonably be seen to square with human nature and longstanding experience. We should not depart from them lightly, and certainly not for the sake of fleeting fashion. Neither should people be left to guess what the ruler’s next whim will be.

In a frieze above the Supreme Court building entrance there are, I have read, images representing the seminal laws of Israel, ancient Babylon and Islam. It has not come to my attention that anyone particularly finds that offensive. Where are the principles of Shinto? The images are not intended to promote Jewish, Babylonian or Arabic law, but to promote the idea that definite laws are beneficial to humans and should endure in a society.

A rational, even a safe, society cannot exist without the imposition of some moral code or other upon the populace. And, the contradictory (usually gender-based at present) things in it should not persuade us that such imposition is not still there in a very significant way, or that it shouldn’t even be there.

As “secular” a portion of the law as the Uniform Commercial Code is profoundly based on Judeo-Christian principles of justice and fairness in trade. I have had many years of experience in commerce, and one can easily see those principles enacted on page after page. Older cases construing it actually say such things. Modern ones don’t, but they still follow the precedent of the older ones for the most part. It is a commonplace to hear people complain that some law or outcome “is not fair”. By that they typically mean that it does not square with their own subjective judgment.

In the west, the choices are to follow time-tested concepts directing human behavior, or to abandon the very notion that the same should exist, opting for relativism and subjectivism. Unfortunately, the latter choice is actually a choice for chaos; the “law of the jungle” or (most likely) the imposition of the “justice of the Sultan”. As westerners who have millenia of background in Judeo-Christian principles, the choice of codes of conduct is, and ought to be, pretty obvious, whether we’re particularly religious or not. We can at least, that way, have a reasonably good idea what’s expected of us and our neighbors with regard to us.

Returning briefly to capitalism, if greed and selfishness are inherent to it, then it’s because greed and selfishness are inherent to the negative aspects of human nature. It can fairly be said that greed and selfishness are demonstrably present in every human institution. That’s not because they are institutions, but because they are human. The real question is which system or systems best moderate those tendencies. My argument is that since capitalism is inherently competitive instead of utterly determined by such things such as birth or the favor of some despot or bureaucracy, that very fact is likely to moderate excess.

 

[St_Francis]

There was also plenty of greedy and selfish people in NATO countries during the Cold War. It is not a unique phenomenon confined to the Soviet Union. Greedy and selfish people are not some KGB/FSB plot to immiscerate people in capitalist countries, and they did not just suddenly appear after the fall the Soviet Union and capitalist countries suddenly transmuted into “crony capitalist” countries.

I was responding to a comment blaming capitalism for greed and selfishness by saying that capitalism is not what causes greed and selfishness, and gave as an example the fact that there were plenty of greedy, selfish communists.

I object to the notion of “crony capitalism” since that is an obvious means of trying to distinguish from some pure, idealistic capitalism from some degenerated form today; furthermore, there does not seem to be any significant pressure to reform capitalism.

I use the term crony capitalism to differentiate it from a free-market system which is not in close alliance with the government, for which I do not know a name.

And, no, I do not think that that would be a perfect system. The problem is that we look to “a system” to perfect people when the fact is that only people can perfect themselves, one at a time. The bad news is that a free market which is not in alliance with the government to achieve its aims will not perfect people; the good news is that it would at least give people more freedom to perfect themselves.​

I will proffer a radical suggestion: a lack of genuine egalitarian values causes perceived moral decay and personal alienation.

This was from a previous exchange:

My response:

Also, this is from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion where the character Philo discusses the influence of religious morality on public conduct.

As a Catholic, I disagree with Hume, but it would take more time than i have now to explain why.