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RE: Nostalgia For Traditional Conservatism

in #conservatism6 years ago

Let me clarify what I meant by that. So, classical conservatives were critical of capitalism (which they saw as a system of wage-slavery, with wealth concentrated at the top). Their critique resembled leftist critiques in many ways. The difference was the solution they proposed. The conservatives proposed widespread distribution of ownership (make private property the foundation of society and ensure nearly everyone has some)... Russell Kirk touches on this in "The Conservative Mind"...socialists, on the other hand, proposed replacing private property with public property. So, conservatism was a decentralist approach to markets, no centrally-planned economy but also no centrally-planned industry for the most part—opposed to both big business and big government. (Cf. Chesterton, Belloc, Kohr, Schumacher, Kirk, Weaver, Wendell Berry) This is, for the most part, the position that I've come to take recently, in opposition to the far-left position. So, my views at the moment are a mixture of center-right and center-left. (Very different from where I was coming from when you first stumbled across my Steemit posts.)

Anyways, that is what I meant, there is very real agreement between conservatives and socialists in their opposition to capitalism (which they both happen to define the same way).

As for Marxism, I think you have a very limited and skewed perspective on it. Marx did believe in morality. His theory of ethics was very similar to Larry Arnhart's. (Arnhart is a conservative writer, so obviously their views don't really align, but the general meta-ethical framework is basically identical.) Most marxists (democratic socialists, council communists, libertarian marxists) put ethics and morality at the forefront. That's why feminist ethics, queer liberation ethics, and such got labeled "cultural marxism." Leftists really do believe that inequality is morally repugnant. They're all about ethics and morality. They just have different views about what is right and what is wrong.