The Return to Virtue Podcast

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In this podcast, Steve Moxon (author of The Woman Racket) and I discuss, among other topics, some of the questions he’s most interested in:

* What are males for?

* Why do men so fiercely compete with one another to form a hierarchy?

* What do females contribute to the ‘genetic filter’ mechanism?

* Why is female grouping exclusive whereas male grouping is inclusive?

* Why is pair-bonding the preferred female mating strategy?

* Why don't males compete with females?

* What do you mean by a symbiosis of the sexes?

* Why would it be a mistake to make misogyny a hate crime?

* Why is IPV female-perpetrated?

* What's the truth about women getting the vote and the role of the suffragettes?

Research reviews by Steve addressing all these questions are available on his website at Steve Moxon.

Steve’s recommended reading

Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind

Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue, Nature Via Nurture and The Red Queen

Bernard Chapais, Primeval Kinship

Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption

John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion & the Death of Utopia

Debra Soh, The End of Gender

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it to draw more attention to Steve’s important work and subscribe for future episodes.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beherleader.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beherleader.substack.com/subscribe

World-renowned military historian Martin van Creveld joins me to discuss Stalin. You can buy his book here.

What did Stalin want? Western scholars have traditionally claimed it was power only. Doctrine, they claimed, was secondary, derivative - even irrelevant. But Stalin stuck doggedly to his basic ideas and concepts even when the evidence suggested he should abandon them.

It's a comforting thought for Western scholars to assume that a mass murderer could not also be an intellectual and that Marxism could not possibly have been involved. Stalin is more palatable as something Eastern, primeval even, rather than Western.

But Stalin was influenced more by the western (mainly though not wholly, German) revolutionary traditions embodied in the ideas of Marx, Engels et al, than by the native Russian philosophical/doctrinal/political traditions of statism, bureaucratic centralism and mobilisation of society. In contradistinction to the ancien regime pre-modernity of tsarism, he is a part of modernity.

The 'standard' story of the development of Marxist thought in Russia outlines that as the imported ideas from Europe were grafted onto the native Russian revolutionary plant, the graft gradually took on the characteristics of the native plant, until it was almost unrecognisable.

The lineage is so clear, however, that all of Stalin's doctrines, like all of Lenin's, can be found in the Western European revolutionary tradition.  Stalinism, then, is a possible outcome of it. His private library comprised almost entirely works by Marx, Engels and Lenin - all the hand-written notes. His mentality was Marxist.

The interests of the nation, he thought, were best served by revolutionary change. Socialism allied with patriotism was the best way to defend the interests of the nation. Numerous streams flowed into the river of his political thought:

- Jacobinism (revolutionary patriotism, combining centralisation, government by terror, patriotism);

- The state in the thought of Marx and Lenin (centralised, minority rule, bureaucratic);

- The notion of a proletarian revolution in a backward country

- Marxist nationalism (Marxism actually contained a strong nationalist element)

- Stalin’s intellectual development before October and under Lenin (in particular his views on the national question).

- Marx and Engels appeared to see the proletariat as a force for 'patriotic regeneration'.

Stalinism's origins are ultimately in the West.

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Paul Gottfried is editor in chief of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is also the Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years, a Guggenheim recipient, and a Yale Ph.D.

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Born in Russia and educated at Moscow University, Alexander Boot lectured on English literature, wrote art and film criticism, and made a nuisance of himself with the authorities. Pursued by the KGB, he emigrated in 1973, first to the USA and then, in 1988, to the UK.

Alexander Boot is the author of How the West Was Lost (2006), God and Man According to Tolstoy (2009), The Crisis Behind Our Crisis (2011), How the Future Worked (2013),  Democracy as a Neocon Trick (2014) and co-author of A Nation That Forgot God (2010).

Praise for 'How the West was Lost':

“Alexander Boot puts his finger precisely on the malaise affecting western societies. His book is the most readable account of the decline of the West since Spengler, and serenely free from the contamination of academic jargon. It should be read by politicians, teachers, bishops and anyone who has anything to do with public administration. We should all read it. Twice.”–Reverend Dr Peter Mullen, Rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and author of Holy Smoke: The Daily Life of a Rector in the City of London

“Highly original…an extremely important argument even for those who have no religious belief, and Alexander Boot puts it more unflinchingly, more courageously, than anyone else.”–Theodore Dalrymple, author of Life at the Bottom and Our Culture, What’s Left of It

“There are many wise ideas in this book”–Roger Scruton, writer and philosopher

http://www.alexanderboot.com

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beherleader.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beherleader.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beherleader.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beherleader.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beherleader.substack.com/subscribe