A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Dostoevsky Was Right, And I Hate Socialism

By: R.J. Moeller

In the opening pages of his masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky gives a description of the key players the reader is to meet in his epic tale of generational sins and familial redemption.  The third and virtuous Karamazov brother Alyosha is commended by the narrator not only for his devout and fervent faith in God, but the methodic patience and due diligence he exhibits in his pursuit of moral truth and wisdom.  In contrast to the rudder-less passion that so many young people of that generation (1860's Russia) had for new and constantly-changing "causes," Alyosha is described as follows:

"The path he chose was a path going in the opposite direction of many his age, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement.  As soon as he reflected seriously on it, he was convinced and convicted of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul, and at once he instinctively said to himself: 'I want to live for immortality with Him and I will accept no compromise.'

In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor question, but it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism today. It is the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from earth but to set up Heaven on earth."

I couldn’t have said it better had I blogged it myself.

As much as I would love to write an entire column on the subtle genius of Dostoevsky’s analysis of the human condition in Brothers, let me focus like a laser-beam on the profound insight he made some 150 years ago regarding the “question” of socialism.  Socialism, the economic and political theory that advocates for the state to control the means of production and oversee the distribution of resources, was relatively new back in Old Fyodor’s day and the assumption among intellectuals from Moscow to Mexico was that it would inevitably become the way all countries ran their government, society, and economy.

Now, with the winds of a century-and-a-half of unflattering evidence at our back, it ought to be much easier to identify the failings and false assumptions of countries that adopted Leftist (i.e. collectivist, Marxist, and socialist) creeds for the management of their nation.  I say “ought to be easier” because it seems that each new generation in Western nations thinks that it will be the one to find that elusive utopian pot-of-gold at the end of their artificially-created, progressive rainbow.  These dreamers have it set in their minds that the problems with socialist thought are all superficial ones.

If we only had the right leader.  If people just knew the good intentions we have in trying to help them.  If the citizenry could just be educated properly.  If the right piece of legislation were to be passed.  If bothersome things like the traditional family structure and local church were to disappear.

Equally frustrating are the responses (or lack thereof) from Americans who don’t believe in top-down socialism, yet remain unconvinced that those who do believe in it are supporting something that is a potential threat to their way of life.

We’re not going to turn into Cuba tomorrow, so why all the fuss?  Progressive liberals aren’t really advocating socialism.  The American system is too strong to be disrupted by a few rabble-rousers at Harvard and in the media.  The Bible doesn’t say that much about “politics” so I don’t think we should even worry too much about it.  Ever heard of “separation of church and state”, bro?

What the naïve on both sides of the political aisle in this country are missing is this: the problem with socialism is not simply this or that policy, this or that leader, this or that educational improvement.  The problem with socialism (and any ideology using socialism as its proverbial North Star) is an inherent rejection of a Higher Power, mankind’s fallen state, and the immortality of the human soul.

Of course not every liberal, progressive, leftist, or out-right socialist is irreligious, but the ideas that have fueled the ideological Left’s engine for two centuries (about the same amount of time America’s Judeo-Christian, free-market value system has been in place) come from the minds of irreligious men and have almost exclusively produced irreligious results.

This matters, or should matter, to anyone who claims to believe in God.  Almost any recent study puts that number at about 90% of Americans.

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, thinkers such as Robert Owen, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Friedrich Engels (pictured right) began to lay the intellectual groundwork for socialism’ move from a fringe idea to the most dominant socio-political force of the 20^th century.  They rejected private property.  They loathed the excesses and exploits of industrialization.  They believed in the supremacy of science and the ability of the enlightened human mind to coordinate the activities of millions of less-enlightened human beings.

Above all else they denied the existence of a personal, rational God and any moral code for living He might have.

This aversion to the divine wasn’t some peripheral, incidental motivation for the founders of modern socialism: it was as foundational to their ethos as “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” is to the American one.  Committed socialists have always been either adamantly anti-religious, or at the very least, unrelenting critics of religion.

Belief in a Higher Power carries with it certain realities for our day-to-day lives, and even for the way we construct a society and government.  For example, it requires humility to acknowledge “there is a God, and I’m not Him.”  Such humility is a precursor for the acceptance that mankind is not inherently good, but actually inherently flawed (and in need of redemption).  If I’m flawed, then we’re all flawed.  If we’re all flawed, then the idea that we can centralize power in the hands of a few and trust their good will and judgment to organize the lives of 300 million people living in the most technologically-advanced, complex civilization in human history becomes untenable (and literally impossible).

Social engineering, an irreplaceable plank in the socialist platform, never works because of the complexities of even the simplest societies and so the socialist committed to science and logic is left floating in the wind with an idea that doesn’t produce the results their theories promised it would.

It is here that the secular collectivist and socialist, realizing that no matter how hard they try they can never fully eradicate man’s primal desire for higher truths and objective standards, begins to invoke language that is soaked in moral, religious connotations.  Words like “justice”, “compassion”, and “fairness” are bandied about on the Left by everyone from Karl Marx to Bill Maher.  To compound the confusing, contradictory positions they take, socialists seek out religious leaders sympathetic to their anti-capitalist, anti-establishment message.

As I wrote about last summer, Barack Obama moved to Chicago 25 years ago for this very reason.  An atheist until his late 20’s, then Barry Obama responded to an ad in The New York Times looking for a young, articulate minority activist to come work in the South-side neighborhoods of the Windy City to help advance the secular-socialist dream of fundamentally changing America as envisioned by the grand puba of community organizing: Saul Alinsky.  The people that recruited Obama were, like Alinsky before them, white secular socialists who thought that their inability to capture the hearts and minds of the black and Latino neighborhoods had to do more with the color of their own skin than their revolutionary message.  What Barack Obama found out from a local pastor named Jeremiah Wright was that to be taken seriously in these predominantly religious communities, young Obama would have to be in church on Sundays.

Dostoevsky had something to say about this wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing tactic the secular-Left constantly employs as well.  During a conversation later in Book One of Brothers Karamazov, a minor character named Peter Miusov recalls the words of a French police inspector put in charge of squashing the 1848 socialist uprising in France.

“We are not particularly afraid of all these socialists, anarchists, atheists, and revolutionists; we keep watch on them and follow all of their doings.  But there are a few peculiar men among them who believe in God and are Christians, but are at the same time socialists.   Those are the people we are most afraid of…The Christian who is a socialist is to be dreaded far more than the socialist who is an atheist.”

This unholy union between church and big-State proponents is as ironic as it is prevalent throughout the history of the last two centuries.  While I can never know the heart or real motivation of someone who claims to believe in both the God of the bible and the tenets of socialism, I can know (and judge) their actions and the results of the things they publicly promote.

I want to be as clear as I possibly can: I hate socialism, in all its various forms and guises.  I hate it like I hate the habitual, willful sins in my life that I struggle with on a daily basis.  I hate it like I hate the thought of someone who has access to clean water refusing to drink it in favor of contaminated pond-water just because they dislike the person offering them the bottle of Aquifina.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the political, economic, or historical aspects of socialism: it all stinks (and to high heavens).

Rejecting socialism and the notion that the centralization of power and redistribution of income are compatible with liberty and prosperity does not mean that one must instantly become a Ronald Reagan-loving capitalist.  It also doesn’t mean that every opponent of socialism has to sign their name to a theologically uniform document, or even be a religious person themselves.

My concern today is two-fold:  First that those of you reading this that do hold Judeo-Christian convictions would at least recognize the fundamental rejection of God that lay at the very heart of socialist (Leftist) thought.  And second, whether you are a believer or not, that you would have had your intellect intrigued enough to set out to find out if I’m accurate in my appraisal (or at least my agreement with Dostoevsky’s appraisal) of socialism.

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” -Winston Churchill