October 15, 2023

The world is in upheaval as the old cultures that built modern civilization succumb to socialism.  Nobody knows where it will take us as we watch helplessly the implosion of our Anglo-centric structures. 

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609268089992-0’); }); document.write(”); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) { if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”) { googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”); } }); }); }

The plain-sight goal of hegemonic progressives is to collectivize property and people into a global pool of nobody-nothingness, while middle-class private ownership (responsible self-sufficiency) and the existence of meaningful persons shrink toward zero.

Socialism is often mistakenly reduced to an economic construct, or to one of its scientific sub-theories such as Marxism or communism.  However, in its essence, it is a spiritual condition with a structural narrative that can be summarized as follows:

A chosen people are called to destroy the old world and liberate society from its cultural captivity, ushering in a new Golden Age.

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609270365559-0’); }); document.write(”); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) { if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”) { googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”); } }); }); }

This is achieved through the abolition of private property and family, hostility toward religion, and a general push for commonality or “sameness,” which is mischaracterized as “equality.”

The underlying motivation behind socialism is a loss of faith in a person’s intrinsic worth and a bitter spiritual craving for its destruction and death.  It is an inevitable result of a humanist-existentialist view of human origins and existence.

The modernist worldview embraced by the West over the past couple of centuries has rejected the supernatural Christian God in favor of an immanent, rationalist, man-centered or “humanist” version of reality.  This has resulted in a philosophical collapse due to the insoluble tension between the “One” and the “Many.”  Within this worldview, the person cannot be both individual and communal at the same time and subsequently becomes an irrelevant and meaningless “concept.”

The meaningless individual draws power and authority toward itself at the expense of the collective.  The meaningless collective welcomes authoritarianism as the source of ultimacy, at the expense of the individual. 

Power is then concentrated into the hands of ever fewer individuals, who direct authoritarian control over a meaningless human collective.

Perhaps because he spent his life within the stranglehold of the USSR, Igor Shafarevich’s thesis on socialism failed to make a religious connection with socialism’s inherent nihilism.  However, from a Christian perspective, socialism becomes comprehensible, and even curable.