The Modern Right: The New Marxists

One of the enduring themes of the Superman comic book series is the existence of an alternate world—Bizarro earth (Htrae) in which everything is backwards. In Bizarro world lives a Bizarro Superman and a Bizarro Jimmy Olsen, etc.  The motto of Bizzaro world is “Us do opposite of all Earthly things!”

The modern conservative movement increasingly resembles Bizarro Marxism, the underlying philosophy of the communist system, opposition to which practically defined the conservative movement in the post-WWII years. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, opposition to communism has understandably faded in prominence. Nonetheless, the conservative movement has recently—bizarrely, if you will—begun to mimic their former adversaries, in a Bizarro sort of way.

Modern conservatism shares many characteristics with Marxist thinking.

• Both are obsessed with class struggle. Marxists see the struggle through the lens of exploitation in which the capitalist bosses exploit the workers by appropriating the value of the labor. Modern conservatives see the same phenomenon, except the roles are reversed. According to your average Rush Limbaugh listener, it is the hard-working entrepreneurs who are exploited by the lazy masses who benefit from the capitalists’ hard work without contributing much of their own. I have never met a committed conservative who wasn’t mindful—seemingly on a daily basis—of the danger poor people (and their liberal champions) posed to the health of society and their own prosperity and security.
• Both hold monomaniacal world views. For the Marxist, all phenomenon can be explained by the conflict and inevitable economic exploitation of the workers by capitalist bosses. For the modern conservative, all phenomenon can be explained by the absolute value of liberty and the wretched human tendency to try to limit it. Conservatives generally interpret “liberty” narrowly as the ability to make a profit with minimal interference from the government. To be sure, some conservatives are also concerned with family values, and others are concerned with a robust form of nationalistic militarism. There is even one strand of conservatism—exemplified by G.W. Bush and other neo-cons—that believes in spreading democracy throughout the world, by force if necessary. However, these other concerns sharply divide the conservative movement and come and come in popularity (the neo-con movement seems particularly out of favor these days, except perhaps in the pages of the Weekly Standard). The only persistent feature that unifies all conservatives is a near-fanatical devotion to tax cuts—especially those aimed at high-income earners—and lessening the regulatory burden on business. The distinguishing characteristic of the monomaniac is the attempt to explain virtually all phenomena—however unlikely that explanation may be—by invoking the favored universal principle. Many conservatives have argued that the recent catastrophic financial collapse was the result of too much government regulation! To anyone who knows anything about the 2008 crisis, this account is, to put it mildly, at odds with reality. Neo-Marxists will explain failures in education in terms of teachers, administrators, and policy-makers exploiting their students. Freudians will explain artistic achievement in terms of sexual psychology, and so on. Matt Groenig once parodied the mono-maniacal college professor shouting the phrase “The nation that controls magnesium controls the universe!”
• Both offer class descriptions in starkly moral terms. For the Marxist, the capitalist is described in the most disparaging fashion and the entire thrust of history and the duty of the leaders of the communist struggle is the annihilation of capitalist domination, and, by implication, individual capitalists. The working masses, on the other hand, are portrayed as universally honest, hard-working, and decent, tainted only when acting as a tool for capitalist propaganda (class membership and class consciousness are not the same). So too, the modern conservative has a peculiar tendency to associate material success with moral virtue. The wealthy are understood as hard-working, creative, and talented individuals whose success comes  entirely from their superior character. The unsuccessful are described as lazy welfare queens who mooch off of the success of others.
  Of course, this is nonsense. This moral interpretation of class membership completely ignores factors that determine success that are beyond our control, such as one’s circumstance of birth and simply benefiting from the luck of being at the right place at the right time. Yes, many wealthy people are very smart and hard-working. Other wealthy people, through a combination of greed and hubris, nearly destroyed the world’s economy. Indeed, many conservatives remain deeply uncomfortable discussing the great financial crisis of 2008 where the primary culprits were clearly wealthy and highly educated. It turns out that not all looters and moochers are poor folks.
• Both believe in a Manichean world view in which the universal forces of light and darkness vie for supremacy. The only difference between them lies in the identities of the good guys and bad guys. Otherwise, both Marxists and modern conservatives see world events as a rather simplistic morality play. The tragedy of this is that it ignores the vast majority of ordinary people who are neither Goldman Sachs traders nor professional street beggars, such as people like, well, me and everyone  I know.