Given a choice between Hitler and Stalin, I choose FDR.
Moral crusades tend to grow inherently unscientific; even those nominally based on a rejection of religion.
This, because the ethical usage of words supersedes the technical or literal usage. This confusion of ethical and literal further demands that the literal be erased. This is what happens, in effect, in Orwell’s 1984.
No doubt when most people think of 1984 they on some level imagine that the socialism that has led to that state of misery and complete manipulation is of the National sort. This provides a nice example of the critical limit on the real utility of blaming it on the Nazis; because the deep shadows depicted in that book are a feature of socialism generally.
To put it in the vernacular: KEEP CALM AND READ ON. Or, as Horatio put it: Season your admiration for a while with an attent ear, till I might deliver my meaning.
In a nutshell: Socialism, whether nationalist or internationalist (whether, that is, racist or anti-racist) tends toward a complete moralization of the world. This complete moralization both demands and is enabled by a redefinition of words, so that – as in Orwell’s ’84 – only moral thoughts can be thought. Everything else is beyond the pale.
Problem being, the reality of nature transcends our normative morality. Perhaps there is a moral truth simple enough to be understood by all, but it is almost never the case that the commonly held morality is absolutely true.
In the ancient Chinese metaphysics, truth and morality were represented by the Circle and the Square. The function of the true human being, the Triangle in this system, was to harmonize these two. To harmonize the Circle of Nature with the Square of Justice, as Justice is the stable base of culture, and therefore its most perfect essence.
This reconciliation of the Circle and the Square was understood in terms of the relationship between the calendar and the year. The four corners of the Square are the four turning points of the seasons. The Circle is the year itself.
What makes this analogy perfect might not be readily apparent, as in the moment, we might forget that the year doesn’t divide equally by any whole number of days. Therefore, counting in days, the calendar and the year, the Square and the Circle, will always slip out of phase.
Translate back now to our original terms for Square and Circle, calendar and year: the Moral and the Real. If we recognize that the Moral and the Real, the Square and the Circle, Justice and Nature, are – like the calendar and the year – not quite a perfect match, then we might grasp what’s the Shadow of Socialism – which is to say, it’s capacity for and tendency toward Evil.
Hegel’s dialectical process of Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis in essence describes exactly the same thing. We tend to think of thesis and antithesis as one idea and another, but the primary split is between Morality and Actuality. The Human, the Triangle, the Synthesis, is the reconciliation of Morality and Actuality.
In short: Communism and Socialism grow dangerous exactly insofar they imagine themselves as the final form of history, the final reconciliation of Morality and Actuality, such that any further Antithesis – whether on moral or actual grounds – becomes heretical. Verboten. Hate speech. It shall not be tolerated.
Worth pointing out that such an idea of a final synthesis, a perfect morality, is profoundly un-American. The American legal system is predicated exactly on a firm skepticism as regards any final moralization of humanity. That’s why freedom of speech and freedom of religion are the two sides of the First Amendment, which is itself founded on an a priori commitment to the freedom of conscience that denies – even in principle – any person or group the right to use State power to enforce a final moralization of society.
Worth pointing out further that this is itself the assertion of a meta-religion. The First Amendment is rooted in Deism; this being the conviction that the moral arc of the universe does bend toward Justice, while yet being humble as to the face of its Final Form.
Marx’s vision of a Communist Utopia amounts exactly to the idea that someday this final form will be reached, after Capitalism finally, if entirely unintentionally, the true Class Consciousness of the Proletariat, who then seize the means of production and use them to build Heaven on Earth, a final reconciliation of Circle and Square.
I leave it to you to ponder the peril in that. And if it’s not apparent, go read 1984 – or perhaps better yet, the history of the 20th Century.