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.

The Contradictory Nature of the Socialist Utopias Is One Explanation of the Violence Involved in the Attempts to Impose Them

The contradictory nature of the socialist utopias is one explanation of the violence involved in the attempt to impose them: it takes infinite force to make people do what is impossible. And the memory of the utopias has weighed heavily on both the New Left thinkers of the 1960s, and on the American left liberals who adopted their agenda. It is no longer possible to take refuge in the airy speculations that contented Marx. Real thinking is needed if we are to believe that history either tends or ought to tend in a socialist direction. Hence the emergence of socialist historians, who systematically downplay the atrocities committed in the name of socialism, and blame the disasters on the ‘reactionary’ forces that impeded socialism’s advance. Rather than attempting to define the goals of liberation and equality, thinkers of the New Left instead created a mythopoeic narrative of the modern world, in which the wars and genocides were attributed to those who have resisted the righteous ‘struggle’ for social justice. History was rewritten as a conflict between good and evil, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And, however nuanced and embellished by its many brilliant exponents, this Manichean vision remains with us, enshrined in the school curriculum and in the media.

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