93. Fred said:

“All socialism, at its core, has a utopian telos. It is a truth claim about what is possible for humanity, nature, and history. Therefore, as a truth claim it has to be examined for its veracity and plausibility. A certain scientific rigor is necessary.”

My take is somewhat less rhapsodic, drawn instead from the kind of thinking that powers Helmut Schoeck’s study of the sociology of envy. For him, marxism and socialism alike are born out of what is at once envy and (consequently) a fear of envy (what the anthropologists study under the rubric “fear of the evil eye.”

I remember last Xmas the ephermeral blooming of Xmas gifts in the shops of Havana provoked marxist ideologues to condemn sternly this deviation, because buying and receiving presents was going to cause envy among others. Socialism and marxism are both very distrustful not of “capitalist” economies but of economics in general. What economics does is rationalize the making of money, and the desire for wealth is the great evil. As a (former) Jesuit you might acknowledge how much these two movements owe to a twisted form of the gospel.

For me, the purpose of leftist politics is the destruction of people, and this is accomplished by making the “equality” of sbsolute poverty the “telos” of the whole game.

When the Great Zero talks about “redistribution,” taking away is all he’s talking about. What is “redistributed” is in the end is nothing more than equal quantities of nothing. One of the biggest cons of all: believing that leftists care about the poor.