And I got to thinking: legalism is an anti-morality and authoritarian. Inherently, it places the locus of decision making as to appropriate behavior not upon the individual, but upon a small group of people empowered to create and enforce laws.
And if such a body arises from a society itself characterized by legalism, upon what can they base their decisions? What principle?
This is the role egalitarianism plays in the modern world. It stipulates, fundamentally, that NO moral decisions are possible, and that the sole guiding principle be that all be equal in all respects.
I described this person as unable to effectively differentiate people and objects. I have spoken often of the wax museum, static quality of the work of Sade, and it seems to me these things are related. A Legalist renders homage to the object of a law. One could make this concrete by referring the literal use of stone tablets in ancient civilizations, like the Roman Republic.
A moralist renders homage to PEOPLE, to concrete, actual, living breathing, suffering, hoping human beings. It necessarily includes empathy and compassion.
Socialism, by this criterion, is not a morality. Never forget that George Bernard Shaw called for the mass murder of all those he considered useless.
One can break ideational systems down in exactly the same way engines can be broken down. It is of course necessary to employ abstraction, but this is quite acceptable when one grasps that one is dealing with ideas qua ideas, and not preaching about how to save the world, and acting on it.