The Moral Asymmetry Which Attributes to the Left a Monopoly of Moral Virtue Accompanies a Logical Asymmetry of the Onus of Proof

The moral asymmetry, which attributes to the left a monopoly of moral virtue, and uses ‘right’ always as a term of abuse, accompanies a logical asymmetry, namely, an assumption that the onus of proof lies always on the other side. Nor can this onus be discharged. Thus in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the theories of Marx were being recycled as the true account of the sufferings of humanity under ‘capitalist’ regimes, it was rare to find any mention in the left-wing journals of the criticisms that Marx’s writings had encountered during the previous century. Marx’s theory of history had been put in question by Maitland, Weber and Sombart; his labour theory of value by Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, and many more; his theories of false consciousness, alienation and class struggle by a whole range of thinkers, from Mallock and Sombart to Popper, Hayek and Aron. Not all those critics could be placed on the right of the political spectrum, nor had they all been hostile to the idea of ‘social justice’. Yet none of them, so far as I could discover when I came to write this book, had been answered by the New Left with anything more than a sneer.

--Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), Kindle e-book.