A political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine. Most people like what a political thinker says, and agree with all of it, or they dislike it, and assume that it is all mistaken.
Edmund Burke and Karl Marx are seen as polar opposites. Burke favored slow, evolutionary changes, respecting what already existed.
Nevertheless, Burke idealized the French aristocracy and monarchy that existed before the French Revolution. When he wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France Louis XVI was still the king of FRance. The Reign of Terror had not begun yet. France was doing what England had accomplished a century earlier: France was developing a representative democracy with a Constitutional monarch.
The execution of Louis XVII and the Reign of Terror happened under the pressure of an invasion of Russia and Austria. If the rest of the world had let the French work out their differences peacefully, I believe that France would still have a Constitutional monarch, and the Napoleonic wars would not have happened.
From Burke I lean that there is often wisdom in tradition, and that we should be pessimistic about human nature and human potential. For a modern treatise on human nature I recommend Sociobiology, the New Synthessis, by E.O.Wilson. For a modern treatise on human potential and its limitations I recommend The Bell Curve, by Professor Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.
My study of Marx includes a fascinating seminar I took on Das Kapital, under the aegis of the American Communist Party. I think Marx had two valid insights. These explain the Great Depression, and the current rise in economic inequality. First, the natural tendency of un or lightly regulated capitalism is to accumulate wealth and income at the top. Second, partly as a result of this capitalist economies experience increasingly destructive economic downturns.
Everything else Marx asserted was mistaken. His most egregious mistake was to assert that loyalties of class are more powerful than loyalties of race, nation, and ethnicity. For most people, most of the time, the opposite is true. The writings of Marx do not explain the First World War, the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism, and the fact that America's white working class is a Republican constituency.
Edmund Burke and Karl Marx are seen as polar opposites. Burke favored slow, evolutionary changes, respecting what already existed.
Nevertheless, Burke idealized the French aristocracy and monarchy that existed before the French Revolution. When he wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France Louis XVI was still the king of FRance. The Reign of Terror had not begun yet. France was doing what England had accomplished a century earlier: France was developing a representative democracy with a Constitutional monarch.
The execution of Louis XVII and the Reign of Terror happened under the pressure of an invasion of Russia and Austria. If the rest of the world had let the French work out their differences peacefully, I believe that France would still have a Constitutional monarch, and the Napoleonic wars would not have happened.
From Burke I lean that there is often wisdom in tradition, and that we should be pessimistic about human nature and human potential. For a modern treatise on human nature I recommend Sociobiology, the New Synthessis, by E.O.Wilson. For a modern treatise on human potential and its limitations I recommend The Bell Curve, by Professor Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.
My study of Marx includes a fascinating seminar I took on Das Kapital, under the aegis of the American Communist Party. I think Marx had two valid insights. These explain the Great Depression, and the current rise in economic inequality. First, the natural tendency of un or lightly regulated capitalism is to accumulate wealth and income at the top. Second, partly as a result of this capitalist economies experience increasingly destructive economic downturns.
Everything else Marx asserted was mistaken. His most egregious mistake was to assert that loyalties of class are more powerful than loyalties of race, nation, and ethnicity. For most people, most of the time, the opposite is true. The writings of Marx do not explain the First World War, the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism, and the fact that America's white working class is a Republican constituency.
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