Politics, News & Issues >
Political & Economic Theory
Get a Widget for this title
RSS FeedIs the neo-Conservatism of William F. Buckley equivalent to Marxism?
Results so far:
| No | 64% | 14 votes | Total: 22 votes | |
| Yes | 36% | 8 votes |
No
Write now
Print
Invite a writer™
Add to FavoritesOne wonders what a neo-conservative moral equivalence of Marxism held by Buckley or anyone else would be? Karl Marx was a political revolutionary who sought to overthrow the government of the rich in order to advance the interests of the poor. Marx believed that the poor of industrial society were the majority and their lives were oppressively bad. Buckley supported the Oprah Winfree class of bourgeois influencing elections and populism through access to the broadcast media. Buckley also supported an aristocratic authority in Republicanism he believed superior to the most ignorant inclined trends of democracy. Marx and Buckley could not be of more dissimilar political camps.
William F. Buckley's conservatism was set like all such within a particular era. Buckley's was a political contest of the cold war years when Marxism was a global creed of rural revolutionaries. Modern neo-cons are a different breed. One might write an article on the differences between neo-cons and traditional conservatives, yet for the purposes of this article the contrast of general modern conservatism since advent of the Marxist doctrine will be the topic of interest.
William F. Buckley's particular political beliefs as a conservative I suspect would be discovered to lie with those of traditional American liberalism. The classical liberalism of the founders after a century became associated with the conservative policies of the industrial rich and old money. Liberalism as a doctrine was wrested from its American origin and transplanted into the massified leftist field of socialist opposition to inherited and established wealth-and there it has fundamentally stayed.
Corporatism as a synthesis of left and right elites following the cold war is a method to co-opt the massified movements of the left and join them with the leadership of the right. Classical liberalism does not exist in an oligarchic or authoritarian state. When Buckley was writing corporatism was not yet the main issue internationally-the battle was yet joined with communism and the post-Stalin recrudescence of neo-Trotskite internationalization of communist expansion policy.
http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Neoconserva tive
Traditionally neo-conservatives emerged from the ranks of disaffected American leftists. Stalinism and Hitlerian fascism had scythed the ranks of many Jewish people, and the need for a support for the creation of the state of Israel and to confront global authoritarian hegemony from left and right provided a catalyst for a movement for some former leftists toward elements of conservative foreign policy. At least that is the story that covers the gist of it. William F. Buckley was however a genuine rather than a neo-conservative. What does that mean today? Let's take another look at the major drift or rift of conservatism in the United States following the second world war a little by considering the arch-conservative figure of the 1964 presidential election Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater' s conservative politics were from the tradition of the historical liberalism of the founders of the Republic. He believed in small capitalism or private enterprise. In private enterprise one works for oneself and is free to accumulate private property and build up capital. That approach works especially well in a frontier society, and Arizona had elements of a frontier society still in Goldwater's lifetime. Modern neo-cons tend to support global corporatism and at least trans-national corporation power to accumulate unlimited, even monopolistic power. Neo-Conservatism isn't a small scale, local or national political movement.
Barry Goldwater's conservative philosophy of the founders is a classical liberalism before the era of trans-national corporate dominance of the world of business. Ronald Reagan was a transitional figure with fundamental Goldwater politics both economically and internationally, for each lived in an era before the conclusion of the cold war against global Marxist expansionism.
William F. Buckley also is a final era of classical liberalism figure completing the bulk of his work before the end of the cold war. The election of the Democratic President William Clinton hastened the end of Buckley's work as a conservative mass media writer. Although aged Buckley continued to write into the third millennium on contemporary affairs yet not with the same authority as during his prime era. Buckley did compose many books during the post-cold war period, including 'Nearer My God to Thee'.
William F. Buckley probably had a belief in classical liberal economic politics so far that it would emerge dominant during the post cold war era as did Wall Street. Few considered that the very success and expansion of trans-national corporations would establish small worlds networks that would become self-standing neo-authoritarian hegemonists providing a fair basis for the exertion of global economic control. Lenin said "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."-that seems a fair approximation of the small worlds global economic network that corporatists are constructing. William F. Buckley did not write about the topic much as it was fundamentally beyond his era.
The challenge for American politics today is to be aware that corporatism is eroding the national basis for U.S. democracy through a variety of means. U.S. nationalism is denigrated from the top down by the left and right each of which support the emerging globalist corporatism. Economic justice for all in the United States and the conservation of the freedom for small scale private enterprise to exist and flourish without a global economic system crushing most of their liberty to conduct independent business is contingent upon national and local political self-determination that is in turn a function of economic liberty.
Learn more about this author, Gary C. Gibson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Yes
Upon learning of the death of William F. Buckley, Jr., How many citizens, I wonder, thought of Karl Marx? Within hours of reading the article in my daily copy of the Arizona Republic, certainly within a day, my mind formed that link.
Both men were the intellectual progenitors of immensely important political and economic movements in modern history. Both men wrote influential books which expounded their philosophy. They both sincerely and passionately believed that they understood the means of achieving the greatest good for the greatest number. These systems came at the solution from extreme and opposite ends of the spectrum, a fact that contributed significantly to their ultimate failure.
Marx believed that economic equality and justice required that power be taken from the capitalists, the bankers and managers of commerce, and given to the working class. He called for a dictatorship of the proletariat. Buckley believed that unfettered capitalism would produce wealth in such abundance that all would eventually benefit and prosper. We are familiar with the catch phrases: "Let the free market work." A rising tide lifts all ships." And there is that other metaphor employing water, the "trickle down" theory of economics.
In developing their theories, both men made a fundamental error. They left a critical element out of their equations: human nature. Any kind of dictatorship in which all power resides in a clique or oligarachy, either on the right or the left, will eventually craze those in power and deprive them of their humanity. The drug of absolute power requires an antidote, and in every totalitarian system that antidote does not exist. With regard to unfettered capitalism, the fatal human element is greed. The natural desire to maximize power and profit leads to a program in which the ends justify any and all means. Too often the result is corruption, indifference to the greater societal good, and abuse of those who do not contribute to the achievement of one's goals.
As one of its major themes, the history of the Twentieth Century includes the horrific abuses of communism. In Russia, where that system was first established on a national level, an estimated twenty millions persons were exterminated, either by execution or starvation, because they were seen as enemies of the state. In Asia, especially China and Cambodia, "social engineering" in the name of the people resulted in mass killings that were a form of class, rather than racial, genocide.
With the breakup of the Soviet Union in the last decade of the Twentieth Century, communism went into a steep decline, and conservatism took center stage. Buckley's writings were the theoretical foundation and inspiration for the Chicago school of conservatism which eventually became known as neoconservatism. This group established think tanks, one of which, The American Enterprise Institute, produced a document entitled "Project for a New American Century." Its stated goal is to project an American economic empire, backed by military power, into the vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
We see the practical application of this philosophy in the administration of George Bush 43. Key members of the institute became the principal advisors to the President and guided the country into what is probably the worst period in our history since the Civil War. We have alienated most the world, inclulding our former staunch allies. We have ignored international law, including the United Nations, and refused to sign on to new humanitarian covenants. We have preemptively invaded countries which did not attack us and posed no threat. We have caused or contributed to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the displacement and destitution of millions more. We are engaged in a military occupation that has become a virtual quagmire. Trillions of dollars in debt, and experiencing a steadily rising death toll among our military, we are a frustrated and bitterly divided nation. All this for empire and a century of prosperity for the corporations and the wealthy class.
Aside from our international adventures, the domestic agenda of the neo cons has had far-reaching, negative consequences. One of the gurus of the neo conservative movement, the late Milton Friedman, stated (I paraphrase) that the only legitimate functions of government are to protect the country against invasion or attack, protect private property, and enforce contracts.The operative word here is "only." And the administration of Bush 43 has been stealthily moving in the direction of nullifying various governmental functions and eliminating regulation of corporations wherever possible. We see the consequences in the rising power of corporations to shape national policy, the failure to develop an energy policy for this century, the increase in industrial pollution, the consolidation of the media in just a few corporate entities, and major dislocations in the economic and financial sectors.
In the admittedly sketchy survey offered above, I believe I have made my case that both communism and neo conservatism have been unmitigated disasters for humanity. And now what? Surely an understanding of where we are going, in light of modern history, is critical for the entire globe. A contribution to the dialogue and debate would be a book tentatively titled, "Karl Marx and William F. Buckley, Jr." My hope is that, upon reading this article, some author or publisher will accept the challenge of seeing that this book is written and published.
Learn more about this author, Allan Wagenheim.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Difference of opinion? Debate now.
- Political & Economic Theory
- With the nation's economic outlook improving, should the US Congress pass stricter finance regulations?
- Does illegal immigration help or harm the country of destination?
- Should we replace some of FICA and SE taxes with a 7% sales tax?
- Should each nation use its own currency or adopt an international currency?
- Is there a solution to the mortgage foreclosure crisis?
