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Social Justice: What's Marx Got to Do with It?

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Introduction In my previous  post  we considered the underlying assumptions of the social justice movement.  In this one, we will consider its Marxist origins.  My contention is that social justice is best understood as a euphemism for what is variously called Neo-, Western, or Cultural Marxism.  It’s called  Neo -Marxism to distinguish it from Marxism in its original form,  Western  Marxism because of its adaptation to western societies, and  Cultural  Marxism because it takes the principle of  class  struggle in traditional Marxist theory and applies it to other social struggles in the broader culture.  This last term is perhaps the most helpfully descriptive.  But to understand Cultural Marxism, we must first understand Classical Marxism.  Classical Marxism Classical Marxism is the name given to the social, political, and economic thought of Karl Marx (1818-1883).  Marx and his associate, Friedrich Engels, were the co-authors of the  Communist Manifesto  (1848).  They,

Social Justice and its Dangers

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Justice is an attribute which is consistently ascribed to God in Scripture and presented as a defining characteristic of his reign ( Deut. 32:4; Ps. 97:2; Isa. 30:18b; Rev. 15:3; etc.).   Because he is just, he calls us to live justly with one another (Gen. 18:19; Ps. 33:5; Jer. 5:1; Mic. 6:8; etc.).    This call includes laboring to form a just society (Deut. 1:13-17; 16:18-20; Isa. 1:16-17; Jer. 22:3; Amos 5:15, 24; etc.).    This is not merely incidental to our call, but integral to it.   Pursuing justice—both personally and in broader society—is one of the weightier matters of the law (Matt. 23:23).   It is, in fact, one of the ways in which we live by the golden rule and fulfill the command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39; Jas. 2:8).   There are few who would argue against justice as the foundation of civilized society, but there is perhaps less consensus now than at any point in our nation’s history as to what justice is .   It’s beco