The collapse of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the dire condition of the Soviet Union left Socialism almost irredeemably discredited.
Understandably, the recent UK Labour policy document tactfully avoided the subject. Such reticence is of course nothing new. Outside the Third World, socialism is dead and will not be resurrected for some time to come.
Labour in the UK with its unswerving devotion to knocking down ninepins with words, that lay claim for the certainty of the moral high ground.
Forego certainty for conflict of values is an ineradicable feature of human experience, thus dispelling, certainty so beloved of the Left and Liberal bien pensants, as some have it ‘the reigning illusion of the enlightenment, is the chimera of a rational morality.‘
So Labour and the liberal mind set might be said to be hubristic and defective.
For as Oakeshott has it, ‘In political activity men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.'
Oakeshott’s view is that rationalism has had a disastrous impact on political life in the West. For Oakeshott, the rationalist is preoccupied with certainty. Custom and prejudice and any other authority are all his enemies. His unaided reason will infallibly tell him what is right. The rationalist sees himself as an engineer, and abstraction, not experience, is his tool. Rationalist politics is ‘the politics of perfection’ and ‘the politics of uniformity’. Far better to accept the realist view of Politics as a voyage in a very choppy sea. .
One of the UK Labour Party endearing traits is to make strong impassioned criticisms of other people without realising that h/she himself exemplifies what he is attacking as say, h/she avows social engineering,
The facile observation that Conservatives are selfish us a cu-de-sac if you believe they are nothing else.. Their selfishness is the rationale of their policies, and they have no other rationale is the Labour dead end of analysis. . Clearly there is a large element of selfishness in Conservatism, as in all human endeavour , to deny it would be blind.
So as Labour Party aparrachiks (even in crushing electoral defeat) banter on infelicitously in sophomore like rants ,as if their so so pungent prose was replete with eternal truths, or, as if decency was solely their
province and this pseudo claims gave then a kind of moral ascendancy,
Yes, all those on the other side are red faced Colonels writing letters of complaint to right wing newspapers and further they are all dirigistes
and treat workers, 'those people' are encourage to be positively Stakhanovite in the their efforts, you know mine 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours and thereby increase your quota, Labour's view are not offered but set to the populace as social compulsion. Labour's trio of Gods are the Welfare State, War on Want and Food Banks,
But if Conservatives are fundamentally opposed to the Welfare State how, one wonders, that in 1939 after twenty years of virtually unbroken Conservative rule Britain had the most advanced social services in the world?
Of course the Conservatives are selfish, to deny it would be blind, but so is everybody else as they endeavour to preserve themselves.
Popper’s argument against Utopian social engineering is crippling,. If we try to control social relations, we create a host of new social relations. Therefore, while piecemeal social engineering may be desirable, Utopian social engineering is a logical and practical impossibility.
Labour failed miserably in the recent UK election through the excesses of an inordinate liberal ideology. Goodbye then Labour Party for I feel by the time of the next election you will no longer be
of any relevance.
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