Matt K. Lewis writes:
The press has seized on Rush Limbaugh’s assertion
that Pope Francis’ recent exhortation amounts to “pure Marxism.” (Somehow, the media managed to ignore the fact that, before Limbaugh uttered those words, others —
such as Ed Morrissey and yours truly — reached vastly different
conclusions.)
To be sure, we’re not in the same league as El
Rushbo, which is why I
cited luminaries ranging from Daniel Bell to Francis Schaeffer to
buttress my argument. But as is almost always the case, one inadvertently
stumbles upon the best evidence only after hitting the “publish”
button.
In this instance, I was preparing for my
interview with Yuval Levin to discuss his new book, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and The Birth of Right
and Left (stay tuned for the podcast), when I was reminded a quote, in which Burke predicts that France
“will be wholly governed by the agitators in
corporations, by societies in the towns, formed of directors in assignats, and
trustees for the sale of Church lands, attorneys, agents, money-jobbers,
speculators, and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy, founded on the
destruction of the crown, the Church, the nobility, and the people. Here end
all the deceitful dreams and visions of the equality and rights of men.”
Agitators in corporations?
Money-jobbers? Oligarchy? That’s Commie talk!
(You see the irony. Burke was warning about a form
of radicalism which actually did lead to the Russian Revolution in
1917.)
In Das Kapital, Karl Marx would dismiss
Burke as an “out-and-out vulgar bourgeois.” But I suppose — taken out of
context, at least — Burke’s aforementioned quote might also have warranted
labeling the father
of modern conservatism a purveyor of “pure Marxism.”
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