0001 Yoram Hazony publishes a six part opinion piece, concerning the relation between Enlightenment traditions and Marxism. on August 16, 2020, in the Quillette website (http://vlt.tc/41uo).  The essay is eye-catching for its portrayal of the capture of liberal institutions by marxists (now, with a small “m”) during the past three-score years.  Marx is back in a big way.

0002 In the prior blog, discussing the Be Little Men movement, two actualities come to the fore.  The first is a slogan_2a, based on righteousness_1a, that addresses the mirror of the world_3a.  The second is an organizational objective_2b, telling what the slogan means to the marxist_3b.  This object^org_2b arises from the possibility of submission_1b.  Submission_1bvirtually situates (and emerges from) marxist righteousness_1a.

0003 Here is a picture of the two-level interscope, composed of two nested forms, following the style in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.

0004 According to Hazony, marxists have infiltrated American media companies, universities, government bureaucracies, courts, so-called profits, so-called non-profits and churches.  Classical liberals have lost control of their own institutions. Classical liberals do not have the intellectual or spiritual resources to combat the threat.

0005 How should I define the righteousness of the classical liberal?

The classical liberal entertains a perspective_c that occludes the foundational world of Christianity.  The classical liberal extols_3c equality, freedom and fraternity_2c.  These_2c are the means to human fulfillment_1c.

The American Bill of Rights declares life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Equality is the right to life and justice.  Freedom is the liberty to make one’s own choices.  Fraternity involves private property.  One must own the possessions that one shares with family, friends, teammates and other social circles.  Otherwise, one usurps.

0006 The classic liberal perspective-level nested form looks like this.

0007 Surely, this perspective_c level does not contextualize marxist content_a and situation_b levels.

Why?

Hazony speaks of two steps.  In the first step, the Enlightenment covers up Christianity.  In the second step, Marxism occludes the Enlightenment.

So, let me start at the first step.

Christian social virtues describe what God reveals about human sociality.  Saint Paul discusses equality in his letters. Christ frees humans from the chains of original sin.  The body of Christ, the Church, possesses an object that brings all into relation.  Finally, all these actualities emerge from the potential that a human can attain eternal life with God, the ultimate fulfillment.

The Enlightenment makes these virtues immanent.

0008 What does this immanence entail?

How does the Enlightenment perspective play into situation and content levels?

0009 First, let me simply slide the normal contexts of the situation_b and content_a levels of the marxist sensible construction underneath the Enlightenment perspective_c level.  Here is the resulting three-level interscope, a relational structure discussed in A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.

0010 Second, I fill in the blanks.

The content level actuality_2a turns extols_3c into a dream_2a, an object associating with an individual’s future, choices and companions. The individual’s dream_2a arises from talents and dispositions_1a.

What possibility_1b situates the individual’s dream_2a?

Of course, there must be opportunity_1b.

Then, with hard work and luck, one realizes_2b that dream_2a.

0011 This sounds so American.  Here is the interscope.

0012 The French Enlightenment, on the other hand, rots as it ripens.  Unlike eighteenth-century America, France is loaded with god-defying intellectuals, salon-attending little royals and cunning lawyers, who dream of running political affairs without the burden of king and church. They have talents and dispositions_1a toward promoting organizational objectives_2bbased on reason_1b.  Reason_1b gives opportunity to righteousness_1a.  As such, their dreams_2b,2a are tautological.

The Marxist frame, perceptively delineated by Hazony, develops in situ within French Enlightenment civilization.  The sarcastic godless intellectuals, self-absorbed gossip-bearing little nobles and the reason-worshipping lawyers consider themselves to oppressed by the oppressors, king and church.  King and church express a false consciousness.  The system works for them, not everyone else, especially the discontented.  Revolution will reconstitute society and the inherent ironies of the present regime will disappear.

0013 Here is a diagram.

0014 Part 3 concerns the attractions and power of marxism.

The individual is attracted to classical liberalism.

The discontented are attracted to marxist (il)liberalism.

The current iteration of marxist religion is Big Government (il)Liberalism (BG(il)L).

0015 What do marxists have that liberals do not?

Here is a picture of the marxist’s sensible construction

0016 Where is the perspective level_c?

Is it too horrible to view?

The Enlightenment perspective-level actuality (equality, freedom and fraternity_2c) addresses three important aspects of human sociality in our current Lebenswelt.

0017 According to Marx, these are not sufficient.

What else is required?

First (A), people form cohesive classes or groups.  May I call them, “institutions”?  Second (B) these classes or groups invariably oppress and exploit one another, culminating in one (the state) enforcing order.  Third (C), the state eventually functions as an instrument of the oppressing class.

0018 Weirdly, Marx’s insight is captured in the chapter on presence in the masterwork, How To Define The Word, “Religion”.   The three elements appear in the institution (content) and sovereign (situation) levels of the society_C tier.

0019 In theory, Enlightenment liberalism achieves order_1b, while using the fewest official acts and decrees_2b.  It cultivates personal commitments_2a to life (equality), liberty (freedom) and the pursuit of happiness (fraternity)_2c.  Civic culture consists of various fraternal institutions_3a, some Christian (“religious”) and some not Christian (“not religious”)_1a, pursuing diverse objectives_2a.

Righteousness_1a does not arise from within Enlightenment liberalism.  Rather, Enlightenment liberalism is conducive to a wide variety of inspirations.  Liberal righteousness_1a demands that each individual pursues opportunities_1b offered by competing civic institutions_3a according to their talents and dispositions_1a.

0020 In contrast, the Marxist vision proposes that a number of otherwise civic institutions_3a (A) will pursue organizational objectives_2a (B) that require official acts and decrees_2b for their implementation_1b (C).

0021 Hazony offers examples.

Ideally, public education should be implemented through a general decree stating that all individuals over a certain age must pass a civic exam in order to gain citizenship.  The exam would be offered by (not one but) a suite of competing voluntary institutions, each operating with transparency due to competition.  Education may be subsidized by vouchers to parents.

In practice, modern education engages unionized teachers (A) who demand a monopoly over “public” instruction and examination, as well as a host of other organizational objectives (B), that require state enforcement through official decrees (C).

In sum, Big Government (il)Liberal education exemplifies the Marxist vision.

0022 Hazony offers other examples.  But, the point is clear.  Marxist righteousness_1a sensibly constructs organizational objectives_2b, that, on one hand, arise from directly from the potential of submission by a target (individuals or institutions)_1b, and, on the other hand, are virtually situated by official acts and decrees_2b in the sensible construction of society_C.

0023 One reason why Marxist ideas are so attractive is that they promote a righteousness_1a that both demands submission from others_1b and entangles sovereign power_3b.

The task of identifying like-minded individuals is relatively easy, since conservatives, Christians, nationalists and (above all) enlightened liberals espouse other styles of righteousness_1a.  All institutions in a modern civic society are vulnerable to infiltration by marxists.

In sum, marxists can easily identify one another, selectively promote one another, and humiliate perceived competition within each institution.  Those who are not marxist within each institution are increasingly expected to toe the party line and to promote entanglements with sovereign power.

0024 Amazingly, Enlightenment liberals find themselves dispossessed by the very institutions that they built.

Does this imply that the marxists hold a perspective-level actuality_2c that (if you will excuse the pun) trumps equality, freedom and fraternity_2c?

Hazony does not directly raise this question.

He does so, indirectly.

He discusses the flaws that make marxism fatal.

0025 Hazony points to the obvious.  Humans evolve in social circles where there are many relationships between a more powerful individual and a less powerful one, starting with mom, dad and their children.  The organizational structure of this foundational institution is discussed in A Primer on the Family.

0026 The family starts in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  So, there is more.

We must add the unconstrained social and labor specializations that characterize our current Lebenswelt.

Our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0027 The organizational structures of civilization_B is a topic worthy of consideration.  The institution_aC and sovereign_bClevels of the society tier_C contextualize the organization tier_B.  The organization tier_B encompasses production_aB, exchange_bB and assessment_cB.  The organization tier_B emerges from (and situates) the individual in community_A.

Too bad inquiry into the organization tier_B is yet to be initiated.

Advancements are blocked by marxist theory, in its various guises.  Marxist theory offers a “scientific” model that forecloses intellectual exploration of the organizations tier_B.

0028 The model goes like this:

The diverse relations between more powerful and less powerful individuals in the organization tier_B are equivalent to the relation between oppressors and oppressed.

The two are more than equivalent.  They are contiguous.

0029 What does contiguity imply?

Peirce’s category of secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  The contiguity is not a real element, it is the substance that causally binds the two real elements.  The marxist substance carries the character of equivalence, but that is not enough.  Ask any marxist.  The causality is systemic.

Anyone who disagrees speaks with what Jacques Lacan calls, the master’s discourse.  Here is the oppressor.

Anyone who agrees speaks, to me_3b, in discourses that Lacan labels, hysteric (for some) and scientific (for others).  For the most part, I find it hard to tell the difference.  I suppose the label depends on the slogan_2a.   Each slogan_2a addresses the one who asks what does this mean to me_3b.

“Me_3b” is a placeholder, virtually situating the person’s reflection_3b in the marxist mirror of the world_3a.

0030 Oppressed? Or oppressor?  Find a location within the abundance of asymmetric relations contained within the organization tier_B.

Here is a diagram of the marxist interscope, as far as this discussion sees.

0031 From the masterwork, How To Define the Word “Religion“, one finds that there are three tiers to the presence underlying the word, “religion”.

They are the society_C, organization_B and the individual in community_A.

The society tier_C puts the organization tier_B into perspective.  The organization tier_B emerges from (and situates) the individual in community_A.

Each tier is diagrammed as a three-level interscope.

0032 So, let me talk business.

When an young individual in community_A enters the organization tier_B, by going to work, “he” engages a number of asymmetric relations.

How does a young person_A navigate these relations_B?

Obviously, the individual in community_A relies on what “he” has been taught.

0033 American classical liberals teach that the individual should have a dream_2a.

French classical liberals instruct the individual with tropes about equality, freedom and human brotherhood_2a.  These expectations_2a encourage asymmetric business relations to be “win-win”.

Marxist (il)liberals indoctrinate slogans raising awareness of how asymmetric relations between individuals somehow cause (are contiguous with) systemic oppression_2a.

0034 Liberalism offers a dream.  Marxism offers a nightmare.  Choose your false consciousness.

0035 Hazony describes the pairing as a dance.  In this dance, one party negates the other.  Thus, the dance is more like the mating ritual between the male and the female praying mantis.  The dance ends when liberalism gets devoured as food for the fertilized egg sacs of marxism.  Afterwards, an all-consuming fecund marxism dies from her own contradictions, in the winter of her totalizing reign.

0036 Why do I say this?

Compare the perspective-level actualities_2c for American enlightenment and postmodern marxism.

0037 When the American enlightenment is reflected in the mirror of the world_3a, slogans_2a call for individuation_1b.  The asymmetric relations characterizing the organization tier are depicted as opportunities and hazards for fashioning a dream_2a based on one’s talents and dispositions_1a.  When confronted with oppressors, the individual should learn how to detect, avoid and escape.  When confronted with mentors, the individual should figure ways to flourish.

0038 Indeed, in America, opportunities_1b for success are manifold, ask any movie actress_2b promoted by the notorious Harvey Winerock, who turns out to be a postmodern marxist_2a,b,c.

In contrast, millions of less-promoted actresses now live in movies of their own, the comedies and tragedies of life in the family_2aB, the traditional portal to the organization tier_B.  For every one actress who reaches an accommodation_2b with Harvey, by playing through his disgusting game_1b, millions of women discover that the asymmetric relations inherent in the family realize_2b their dreams_2a.

Who should be teaching whom?

Surely, a Hollywood actress stands in asymmetric relation to innumerable mothers, among others.

So, what does she preach?

Marxist slogans_2a?

Why?

In order to attain her dream_2b, she is required to become so oppressed_2c that she cannot recognize herself as an oppressor_2c.  She lives out the scientific truth of marxism_2c. She submits_1b and receives both rewards and marxist illumination_2b.

0039 Why are so many civic institutions of American liberalism now controlled by marxists?

The marxist perspective translates the asymmetric relations of the organization tier_B into the languages of oppressor and oppressed.  Mirroring this perspective_2c, slogans_2a emerge from a righteousness_1a that demands submission of the oppressors_1b.  One party in all asymmetric relations_B is already guilty of oppression_1a on the basis of participation in the system.  That party cannot be the marxist, who represents the oppressed.

By definition, the oppressed_2c, such as Harvey Winerock and the Hollywood actress, are exempt because each is a marxist occupying a powerful position in a once civic, now marxist, institution.  Each, in his and her own way, is a victim in an asymmetric relation with a more powerful individual.

For the actress, that more powerful individual is Harvey.

For Harvey, that more powerful individual is the one who bought his soul.