Editing Alasdair MacIntyre (section)

==Politics==
{{See also|New Monasticism}}
Politically, MacIntyre's ethics informs a defence of the Aristotelian 'goods of excellence' internal to practices against the modern pursuit of 'external goods', such as money, power, and status, that are characteristic of rule-based, [[Utilitarianism|utilitarian]], [[Max Weber|Weberian]] modern institutions. He has been described as a 'revolutionary Aristotelian' because he attempted to combine historical insights from his [[Marxism|Marxist]] past with those of [[Thomas Aquinas]] and [[Aristotle]] after MacIntyre's conversion to [[Catholic Church|Catholicism]]. For him, [[Classical liberalism|liberalism]] and [[Postmodernity|postmodern]] [[consumerism]] not only justify capitalism but also sustain and inform it over the long term. At the same time, he says that "Marxists have always fallen back into relatively straightforward versions of [[Kantianism]] or utilitarianism" (''After Virtue'', p.&nbsp;261) and criticizes Marxism as just another form of radical [[individualism]]. He says about Marxists that "as they move towards power, they always tend to become Weberians." Informed by that critique, [[Aristotelianism]] loses its sense of [[Elitism|elitist]] complacency; moral excellence ceases to be part of a particular, historical practice in [[ancient Greece]] and becomes a universal quality of those who understand that good judgment emanates from good character.

In 1951 in student debates at Manchester, MacIntyre described himself as a [[One-nation conservatism|Disraeli Tory]] but later was a member of the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]] (leaving in 1956), briefly of the [[Socialist Labour League]], and later of the [[International Socialists (UK)|Socialist Review Group/International Socialists]].<ref>{{Citation | title = Sects & New left disillusionment | newspaper = The weekly worker | url = http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/813/sects-and-new-left-disillusionment/}}.</ref>