Traditionalist Right V. Conservatism and Capitalism

Plato, philosophically, created the highly insightful and instructive Allegory of the Cave. People in society were supposed to be, unknowingly to them, prisoners chained backwards, meaning with their faces seeing only the walls of the cave; this is while a fire in the center of the cave burned in back of all of them; they determined, among themselves, who was most wise among them by who could best interpret the mere flickering, unreal shadows appearing on the walls.
Plato said, however, that if a prisoner could ever break free and escape that particular place and get to the outside, he would then see the actual reality of the world exposed fully in broad daylight. But, if that same person would return to the cave to tell the prisoners what he had found out and seen for himself, they would just denounce him as being completely insane.
They would, moreover, just continue trying to play the same, dumb guessing games, Plato so contended, about the shadows thinking that mental activity to be the very height of true wisdom. Many readers of this article are, however, still invited to really escape, especially from all dogmatic superstitions, i.e., ideologies, just pretending to be genuine wisdom.
The various ideologies of modernity, which ought not to be simplistically confused with the modern age beginning in about the 16thcentury, reflect those many thought systems that contain various degrees of nominalism in their philosophical impulses, outlooks, and/or conclusions. Objectivity, eventually, gets turned into a supposed subjectivity and vice versa; and, as Richard Weaver correctly had recognized, ideas have consequences.
As was well known by Thomas P. Neil and Heinrich A. Rommen, the classical mind and the modern mind think differently. Before modernity in cognition, men had only assumed, e.g., that if something was not permitted (usually thought to be evil or just wrong), then it was, by definition, against the law as such and prohibited as illegal; after modernity, as Alasdair Macintyre has reminded his contemporaries, men began to suppose that if there were no actual law prohibiting something, then it could be done; this form of blatant, obvious subjectivity becomes transmuted, over time, into a new kind of (logically false) objectivity, the fallacious post hoc, ergo propter hoc ratiocination.
An erroneous conclusion resulted because it was, thus, not held to be (officially) wrong to do what a law did not publicly prohibit; this lead, of course, to the later insanity of legal positivism, meaning that whatever was made legal was ipso facto said to be fully consistent with law, a mere (meaningless) tautology if there ever was one. It is the reductio ad absurdum of positivism, a feature of triumphant modernity. So, communist, nazi, and fascist tyrannies are, of course, then said to be validly able to legitimately pass laws for exterminating unwanted people; ideas do have consequences.
Modernity is, thus, defined not by any chronology; it reflects, rather, the attitudes exemplified by the thinking of capitalism, mercantilism, socialism, anarchism, liberalism, conservatism, environmentalism, feminism, pragmatism, communism, and all the other modernist ideologies that support a material-oriented view of culture, society, and civilization, meaning, basically, the main, aggressive drive toward secularization in thought. Ideological thinking is, therefore, fundamentally the inherent and integral basis of actualized modernity in thought and action and, thus, this explains its terribly corruptive power over so many men and women who become very willing agents of tyranny, injustice, corruption, and oppression.
Both Nazi-style death camps and Communist gulags are not necessarily things of the past; and, one sees, moreover, that all ideologies, more or less, and sooner or later serve the needs of each other because of their common urge toward ideological ratiocination, meaning various degrees of wanted secularization in thinking, as an imperative to foster a positive regard for modernity.
Thus, e.g., Communism (collectivism) and Capitalism (individualism), in terms of modernity, are never truly antagonistic but reciprocal and complementary principles that do seek the same fundamental goals found in a materialist, secularist, humanistic (read: atheistic) civilization; they are the two sides of the same coin of modernity; modern man becomes the only center of all things, a clearly anthropocentric viewpoint in its essence. All the ideologies of modernity, therefore, are, ultimately speaking, on the ideological Left of the political spectrum.
Opposed to modernity, there is the contrary thinking of the traditionalist right, which upholds the great need for a theocentric attitude, meaning that God, not Man, ought to be the central focus of true civilizational attention and fulfillment.
Almost all people are completely unaware, however, that the position of the traditionalist right stands completely opposed to conservatism, neoconservatism, and, for that matter, capitalism as well. C.N.R. McCoy and others have fully demonstrated that what exists, for instance, as conservatism is really, upon analysis, a form of liberalism in that it ultimately supports democracy, unlike the position of Aristotle, which had recognized (full) democracy as being a type or form of tyranny.
In terms of political philosophy, it is not rulership in question by the one (king or tyrant), the few (aristocracy or oligarchy), or the many (democracy) that really counts as being held requisite to good authority and order; rather, free government, through what Aristotle taught it to be as a mixed polity, attempting to combine the best features of the three, ought to exist as the proper, balanced, political order qua form of good government as needed governance.
Regarding contemporary politics, what exists in America as “conservatism” keeps moving, decade by decade, more and more to the ideological Left because it actually is, as above noted, essentially a form of liberalism; this means that, ideologically, it partakes of nominalism (read: subjectivism) in its thinking.
But, the traditional right (TR) opposes, thus, both conservatism and all of liberalism; liberalism consists of the old form, meaning classical liberalism or libertarianism, and, also, the new kind of liberalism as mainly seen in varieties of collectivism, socialism, environmentalism, feminism, etc.
This is because the TR is always necessarily against both the extremes of (total) individualism and (totalist) collectivism, under any euphemisms whatsoever, which may exist now or in the future. For instance, to make the point more easily manifest, a typical American conservative of the 1950s, if brought back through a time warp, would denominate a typical conservative of today as being, basically speaking, a socialist. In the 2008 presidential election, for instance, it is known that a significant number of prominent conservatives, such as Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, etc., had enthusiastically endorsed Obama. Q.E.D.
What exists as neoconservatism is, on the whole, mostly a belief in a lesser form of collectivism in that it supports the welfare-warfare State, as do, in fact, most conservatives who are also, of course, openly sympathetic with capitalism. Thus, “free-market capitalism” as a term needs to be properly seen as being a clear oxymoron because of the inherent contradictions involved in the much opposed thinking.
The TR in America, however, favors only free-market economics or entrepreneurship and is against capitalism, meaning State-capitalism or mercantile-capitalism that fundamentally involves itself in upholding Big Government, Big Business and Big Labor, an iron triangle allied logically to statism, meaning both domestic and foreign interventionism; for the one, collectivism at home, tends to logically breed and uphold the other, namely, interventionism done abroad, aggressive wars, as an extension of this statist ideological orientation.
Whenever rightly understood, the ideal of free-market economics, in basic opposition to capitalism, supports entrepreneurship, innovation, invention, competition, risk, creativity, and market dynamics; capitalism favors subsidies, corporate welfare, tariffs, quotas, and other interventionist expedients that, mainly speaking, harm, distort, or limit most competition, innovation, invention, risk, creativity, and market dynamics. So, the TR, therefore, logically stands against the forces of Big Government, Big Business, and Big Labor, meaning, of course, the essentially predominant components of modern capitalism.
The position of the TR, for instance, detests nationalism since it is usually involved with aggression and chauvinism but, on the other hand, always favors patriotism, the love of a country that does not need bloodshed to continually affirm. How is this meant? Adolf Hitler, e.g., publicly hated patriotism, as he had stated in his evil book, Mein Kampf, because he only wanted to have nationalism exist, namely, Germanic nationalism, of course.
Also, in this important regard, one needs to properly remember that Hitler was really a man of the ideological Left; see: Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot, which is, as an understatement, a very thorough and highly detailed discussion of the entire topic; only a biased ideologist would disagree with the force of the persuasive analysis, which was done through meticulous and rigorous research conducted over many years.
A rootless cosmopolitanism is what the Left only ultimately wants, as was correctly noted by Dr. Russell Kirk, Joseph Pieper, and many others; the TR, on the other hand, intelligently favors an “aristocratic” internationalism that honors patriotism but still scorns nationalism; this is because the latter has its firm roots mainly on the Left, historically speaking, as to its actual ideological origins.
What is really meant here in much larger terms by, however, the entire preceding discussion? The traditionalist position in politics concerning rightwing thought, it is contended, wishes to stay within the region of the golden mean; this thought, however, has been distorted, illogically warped, in the modern mind to absurdly imply the assumed middle way or via media, which is, in fact, totally incorrect.
For instance, the true golden mean between mere foolhardiness and cowardice is courage; Aristotle, therefore, never meant, as yet another example, that the supposed mean between excessive vice and tolerating no vice at all is to, somehow or other, participate in some vice. As an economic illustration, the so-called mixed economic system is not at all any golden mean and should be avoided, at all costs, in favor of going toward full free-market economics for then rationally achieving a wanted market-oriented economy, as known through the Austrian School of Economics.
For instance, centralized planning, to whatever degree, is to be completely shunned, not compromised with, in supposedly hoping to find a (false) middle way between often incorrectly assumed extremes. What is, appropriately, needed is the always wholesome and right search after the true opinion, which is what orthodoxy, by definition, originally meant; thus, in the area of religion, e.g., Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman had realized, earlier in his life, that there was no via media to be found in Anglicanism because all actual, Christian, religious orthodoxy can only be found in the Roman Catholic Faith.
The proper effort of finding the true mean is normally done, as much as is realistically possible, by also avoiding all of the unwanted extremes in politics; thus, as good examples, pacifism and militarism are the terrible extremes of each other that ought always to be solidly rejected by all reasonable and intelligent people; this is because, among other reasons, they push forward Søren Aabye Kierkegaard’s entirely false dilemma, absurd thesis, of the supposed either/or philosophical situation. What is, one may ask, the suggested alternative available that is, therefore, actually opposed to both pacifism and militarism?
The best ideals of chivalry are, therefore, recommended and ought to be rationally and reasonably put into modern terms; this is, logically speaking, concerning a normal patriotic defense of one’s native land, whenever genuinely needed, by, thus, maintaining defense forces of such a militarily successful nature and degree as to (rationally) discourage foreign threats, so as, also, to then ever appropriately avoid both the condemned extremes.
Opposition to the TR is based upon, ultimately, ignorant appeals to extremism in politics. And, the greatest “enemy” of the TR is, ironically, conservatism because it dilutes, blocks, distorts, minimizes, corrupts, and limits philosophical options that try to avoid degrees of collectivism; conservatism has, therefore, mainly helped lay the groundwork, too often, for developments naturally tending toward many types and kinds of socialist-oriented projects, programs, motivations, legislation, etc.
There is, nonetheless, almost always a decent and good middle way that can be realistically found and taken for staying away from either too much individualism, libertinism that comes logically from libertarianism, or all excessive degrees of collectivism, namely, the social-market economy model of Fabian Socialism.
The requisite alternative direction, regarding the latter concern, ought to be forever toward trying to achieve greater levels of attaining socioeconomic and politico-economic efforts in adamant favor of free-market economics for any modernized country. Perfection on earth, of course, is not being ever (irrationally) promised; the rational and educated choice is, therefore, to carefully make sure that the best, meaning any impossible ideal not of this world, is never made the enemy of the good.
Unfortunately, too often conservatism, neoconservatism, and capitalism, either singularly or two or more combined, continually try to wrongly defeat efforts at demonstrating to people that the genuine and truly ever rightwing alternative known as the traditionalist right actually exists.
People must be educated to learn, one hopes, that conservatism, neoconservatism, liberalism, socialism, libertarianism, pragmatism, and capitalism can all be logically rejected in the true effort to then better defend and firmly promote the TR as the always preferred political direction; this is, of course, held to be perfectly valid for any country desiring an ever fuller degree of genuine freedom and liberty for its citizenry; on the other hand, the ideologies of modernity, the intellectual chaos of nominalism, lead inevitably, logically, toward enslavement, destruction, and, finally, death.
Unfortunately, not even the truly massive terrors of the past 20th century, with its Communism, Nazism, and Fascism taking over various nations, have been enough to vigorously dissuade people from thinking ideologically. Michael Oakeshott, in his Rationalism in Politics, had warned about this proclivity and its often literally dangerous consequences.
Useful reading for combating ideological cognition, for those interested, would include the following: The Mystery of Knowledge by Fr. John Peifer, The Natural Law by Heinrich A. Rommen, The Ideology of Max Weber by E.B.F. Midgley and, also, his The Natural Law Tradition and the Theory of International Relations; The Revolt Against Reason by Sir Arnold Lunn, After Virtue by Alasdair Macintyre, The Structure of Political Thought by C.N.R. McCoy, The Decline of Liberalism by John H. Hallowell, The Rise and Decline of Liberalism by Thomas P. Neil, also, his Makers of the Modern Mind.