/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19694726]

Recommend me some books on the failure of conservatism in the West.
I'm talking particularly about the conservatives' failure to defend traditional values, their ubiquitous acceptance of liberalism, their paradoxical alliance with free-marketeerism, and their relegation in society to impotent whiners who criticise the culture's trajectory but don't actually do anything to change it.
The prime example of what I am talking about is the Conservative Party in Britain. They are basically Labour, but a bit more sensible.

[Anonymous No.19694735]

It's as simple as the fact that Marx was right and that the driving engine of history is class conflict. Ideology, intention, will and morality are irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.19694837]

>>19694735
You think religion, for example, is irrelevant to the course of history? You think history would be more or less the same if Christianity had never come into being?
What about the individual actions of powerful men? What class struggle was Xerxes harnessing when he mustered up 2 million men and marched onto Greece? I daresay the course of history would be quite different if he had not made the choice to do that.

[Anonymous No.19694865]

>>19694837
im religious and find it hard to deny that everything can be reframed into a class conflict. In your example, Xerxes was a king with capital and exploited those without it ergo Marx was right. Many such cases.

[Anonymous No.19694877]

>>19694735
Marx wasn't right about anything. "Class conflict" is just slave morality seen through the lens of paupers. Lower class, inferior members of society want to be seen as a victim. Marxism is the morality of that - "make the rich and powerful pay! Its unfair they're better than me!"

[Anonymous No.19694879]

>N-Now let's just settle down, everyone.. I think another two or three centuries of voting for the Grand Old Party should do it. We can still have the ultimate multicultural laissez-faire capitalist social experiment with open borders.

[Anonymous No.19694885]

[Anonymous No.19694903]

>>19694865
If all Marx meant was that power shapes the course of history, then his insight was trivial. Of course Xerxes was powerful. But my point was that Xerxes made a personal choice to attempt to subjugate Greece, and this personal choice had nothing to do with class struggle. I understand the philosopher's desire to create a general theory of history, but one cannot simply ignore things like religion, personal choice, biology, environment, and even randomnness.

[Anonymous No.19694922]

>>19694877
>
You've never seriously read Marx. Nice strawmanning of Marx though.

[Anonymous No.19694946]

Conservatism is just a veto function against the most progressive liberal demands. The genealogically (and often literally) older lineage of liberals get to veto these for as long as they live or have enough power relative to the progressives to do so. The system never collapses because everyone who participates in office believes they are a rebel who is fighting to save the state from its enemies. While this is not literally the opinion of any author I can think of, I would say my works cited are Paul Gottfried, Frank Hebert, and Your Mother.

[Anonymous No.19694954]

>>19694903
"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

[Anonymous No.19694962]

>>19694877
>make the rich and powerful pay! Its unfair they're better than me
these days you can hardly find any quality in the rich except that they're psychopaths

[Anonymous No.19694963]

>>19694922
Nah, Marxists are just solipsistic morons who each have of their own interpretation of Marx in their own little head of theirs.That's why most people don't waste their time with degenerates like yourself and sects. Your secular Talmudic ramblings has no place in the modern world.

[Anonymous No.19694967]

>>19694962
The rich are the amount the brightest, hard working and productive members of society. They're seen as psychopaths by the envious paupers.

[Anonymous No.19694971]

>>19694963
Back to pol with you cretin.

[Anonymous No.19694974]

>>19694971
Not everyone that hates you degenerates from /pol/. Your filthy isn't liked here either.

[Anonymous No.19694976]

>>19694903
Then you need to roll back to Hegel, not Marx. Marx is like a Paul if Hegel is a Jesus. And Kojeve is Luther. And Bataille is Nietzsche. And then you will understand dialectic

[Anonymous No.19694994]

>>19694974
"Secular Talmudic Ramblings"
not a poltard?
LOL

[Anonymous No.19694996]

>>19694885
This sounds well and good but in practice fascism is just a jingoistic ideology fuelled on mass-hysteria and delusions of grandeur. Just another revolutionary tradition coming out of the French and American revolutions, which thinks it can replace God and family with the State. The only good "fascists" were Franco and Salazar, although they weren't really fascists.

[Anonymous No.19695003]

Burke, the Whig.

[Anonymous No.19695034]

>>19694726
>I'm talking particularly about the conservatives' failure to defend traditional values
Conservatism is not about defending "traditional" values, that's a subjective term and besides, the role of the Conservative as the great defender of evangelical christendom is a boomerist invention. Republicans freed the slaves. The first openly pro-gay US President was a Republican. Etc.
>Their paradoxical alliance with free-marketeerism
Look into the infestation of the American right with Randian Objectivists and Libertarians (same thing) in the 1970s. This is an even younger, fresher phenomenon than the previous one.
>their relegation in society to impotent whiners who criticise the culture's trajectory but don't actually do anything to change it.
Politicians do not shape culture; politics is downwind from culture and your assumption that the world functions otherwise betrays you as a totalitarian.

[Anonymous No.19695061]

>>19694967