Catholic discussions of Marxism and nihilism

  • Thread starter Thread starter momof8
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

momof8

Guest
Hi,

I have heard three college students so far state that “Communism was a good idea, it just has not yet been applied correctly.” These three students all attended Catholic colleges. I have also read a comment recently from a college professor who said he hears this more and more often from students. The latest person to make this claim is my 19 year old son. Since I asked if he had ever read Marx and the answer is no, he is starting to read The Communist Manifesto. He is also looking into Neitzsche. I would like to find excellent books that discuss these philosophies from a Catholic perspective so that he can have some Catholic influence in his reading.

Thanks!
 
Honestly, your son is 19 and in college. He has just found two “cool”, counter-cultural philosophers that he knows the adults in his life frown upon. My guess is a year from now he will have forgotten all about it.

But just to put your mind at ease, ask him a few questions.

For Marx:
  1. Ok, son. How has it been applied in the past and what would the “right” way be?
  2. What are the stages of communism and do you think it would do more harm than good to transition our society through them or not?
  3. What were the circumstances surrounding his life and how do you think his writings and outlooks would have been different if he lived today in our current society?
For Nietzsche:
  1. Do you know what an ‘immoralist’ is?
  2. How do you reconcile the idea that a Christian is obligated to live without their religion for a time to discover if they really do have any morality with the Catholic faith?
  3. What does ‘God is dead’ mean and how did he use that phrase to explain the state of humanity?
Honestly, I love both philosophers. Both were brilliant, both are extremely thought-provoking, and heck, if it gets a 19 year old reading and thinking about something real, great. But I think that all kids in their late teens-early 20’s pick up one or two thinkers and just hand over their entire thought process and worldview to them for a couple of years.

But you know, even Nietzsche pointed out that its devastating to realize that all of the great philosophers that you have spent your life idolizing were only human.
 
Marx didn’t invent his ideas, in fact many of them came
from Clinton Roosevelt. Just as the US founding fathers
ideas came from Montesquieu.
 
Great response above! I have been VERY into both of those philosophers…though marx was more of an economist with a passion for political philosophy. his thoughts are based on Hegel as i am sure you know. but he is 19! if you did your job as a parent, don’t worry. let him explore. blind faith is not worth having. you MUST test it in my opinion, and i came out stronger in my faith. you can’t direct your son forever, but pray that he learns more and keeps his faith at the same time.
 
A good idea that just wasn’t applied correctly? Yes, millions of dead citizens is quite a misapplication, if indeed it was a misapplication. Perhaps he should read “The Black Book of Communism.”
 
Thanks for your responses!

BlueEyedLady, I did ask my son some similar questions. I hope he does ok reading these philosophies. Unfortunately he is currently an atheist so the Faith is not guiding him. When/if he wants to discuss what he is reading, I hope to have something Catholic for him to read as a follow up. I own, and have been trying to find the time to read, Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy by Fr. Robert Sirico. I will pass it on to my son if he wants to read another point of view, from someone who used to be where my son is. Fr. Sirico can certainly relate to a young man who is questioning what he’s been taught.

Datritle, if I’d done my job as a parent… that is certainly a big part of the worry! I hope my son turns out ok, in spite of the job I’ve done!

Snowball 7, I will mention Clinton Roosevelt to my son, as well as Montesquieu. My son is on a break from college. At least this reading is keeping his mind sharp, unlike the Netflix he’s been spending his time on since his break started!
 
OP : don’t worry too much about the whole free market thing…many Catholics do NOT believe in capitalism. I am a distributivist. check out Catholic social teaching on this…this would probably interest him…somewhere to start! approach him where he is now…this will help i am sure.
 
momof8 said:
Hi,

I have heard three college students so far state that “Communism was a good idea, it just has not yet been applied correctly.” These three students all attended Catholic colleges. I have also read a comment recently from a college professor who said he hears this more and more often from students. The latest person to make this claim is my 19 year old son. Since I asked if he had ever read Marx and the answer is no, he is starting to read The Communist Manifesto. He is also looking into Neitzsche. I would like to find excellent books that discuss these philosophies from a Catholic perspective so that he can have some Catholic influence in his reading.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
How about the Servile State by Belloc?
Snowball7 said:
Marx didn’t invent his ideas, in fact many of them came
from Clinton Roosevelt. Just as the US founding fathers
ideas came from Montesquieu.
Click to expand...
Actually natural rights came from Locke and he seems to have gotten the idea from Suarez
datritle said:
OP : don’t worry too much about the whole free market thing…many Catholics do NOT believe in capitalism. I am a distributivist. check out Catholic social teaching on this…this would probably interest him…somewhere to start! approach him where he is now…this will help i am sure.
Click to expand...
Capitalism and the free market are not the same thing
 
true, they are often lumped together in laissez faire circles though
 
There is a book I heard of but have not read by a Catholic priest iirc named Fr Morerod.

I heard about it in one of these two talks: the Roots of Modernism or The Enlightenment… (one of the first two in this series).

Both of these sets of talks would also be good introductions to the subject. Pope Leo XIII also condemned Communism in Rerum Novarum, and there is another excellent refutation of Communism in another encyclical… which I can’t recall the name of right now. However, in this very brief article, there are 3 of those encyclicals named. (For your purposes, it is not worth finding the original article he refers to.) And Divini Redemptoris mentions a couple more.
 
I recently read GK Chesterton’s “Heretics”. A 19-year old might not quite “get it”, but it’s a series of short essays about a bunch of his contemporaries - HG Wells, GB Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, etc. (Many of whom were good friends with Chesterton). In these essays he basically sets out to point out the faults and fallacies in their thinking, while still complimentary in a backhanded sort of way. But In a good number of them it amounts to pointing out the faults and fallacies that come about from following Nietszche, who was much in vogue then (this is in the 1910s or 1920s).

Chesterton can be a little dense and meandering in his arguments, which is what might put off a 19 year old. But he does it all with a wonderfully dry sense of humor, and at least here he makes almost no explicit reference to Catholic dogma… you know, your son might tune out if you direct him to a book that is quoting scripture and papal encyclicals and the catechism, and so forth.
 
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If anything, so long as it gets him reading, there could be worse starting points. Keep in mind that Marxism is simultaneously both an economic system and an attempt at an alternative system of morality wrapped up in one overly ambitious package.

I do respectfully disagree on suggesting The Acton Institute “stuff”. They are a little too pro-free market (for example, some of their principles place them squarely against church teaching, see: TOWARDS REFORMING THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL AND MONETARY SYSTEMS IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL PUBLIC AUTHORITY) and it could very likely backfire - pushing your child farther into the abyss. I would also steer clear of resorting to arguments based on economics, it can easily turn into futile hair splitting with no clear cut answer (I like to joke that economists are basically psychologists with slightly better math…). Also, you could easily ensnare yourself in a circular logical loop going the afore mentioned route - keep in mind that Acton is credited with the phrase “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” which when applied to monarchical governments suggests democracy, but when applied to corporate capitalism can suggest, you got it: socialism.

Instead, I would recommend reading Dostoevsky, particularly Crime and Punishment, but also Notes from the Underground. Bare in mind that Dostoevsky’s parents were Orthodox missionaries and that his works are based upon a Catholic moral system. Also, Crime and Punishment was Dostoevsky’s response to Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s What is to Be Done, a nihilist favorite and a forerunner to the kind of thinking that gave rise to Stalinist Russia.

Dostoevsky meticulously shows what will most likely happen to those who zealously embrace rationalism and disregard their God given moral conscious and gets to the root of what was wrong with both Marxism and Nihilism and philosophies. Then give him William James’ Pragmatism…

On the other hand I can’t say that I entirely blame your son’s ambivalence toward our economic system given these last few years: Merton Sholes wins the Nobel Prize in '97 only to be indicted by the feds a few years later, Alan Greenspan’s fall, and Krugman’s article How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?.. Yeah, you gotta admit that the kid may seem to have a point.

But if you look at economic history, all nations or all economic systems have always endured economic growing pains. Just look at what was going on in the world 100 years ago, yikes! Many of these problems are in fact a part of human condition that no system (ahem, Communism) can cure. Capitalism is in a continually state of evolution which can be scary, but not if you have faith…
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top