An influential Australian leftist

Mark Richardson writes at Oz Conservative:

When you look at the intellectual movements of the twentieth century you lose any sense of surprise that the West has entered a period of decline. The marvel is that the West hasn’t sunk more quickly.

Richardson then summarizes the ideas of 20th century Australian philosopher John Anderson. Like so many on the left, Anderson started as a pro-Soviet Communist, then gave that up, moving by stages from the dictatorship of the proletariat to the denial of objective moral truth and a kind of left libertarianism. Material reductionism, sexual freedom, a.k.a. promiscuity, which Anderson said was a sine qua non of culture, permanent opposition to what is—Anderson was expounding these ideas in journal articles in the 1940s, and Richardson shows how they were seminal in the formation of Australia’s own ruinous counterculture in the 1950s and ’60s.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 13, 2011 09:18 AM | Send