If Communism had the atheistic elements of it removed, would the Church approve of it?

[Crux_Sancta]

Hi, I’m going to be subversive of the modern mentality and say my opinion:

Political ideology is a mass psychosis which human beings have created when they abandon God and try to determine Good and Evil for themselves, not realizing that there is no basis for Good and Evil without God, which creates a negative dialectic, or downward spiral into chaos and evil.

I am not advocating a return to monarchy, simply pointing out that ideology is based on a determination of good and evil in a sort of pseudo-religious sense, and without the foundation of God, it quickly degenerates into an excuse to gain personal power, hypocrisy and totalitarianism.

 

[Crux_Sancta]

Hi, I’m going to be subversive of the modern mentality and say my opinion:

Political ideology is a mass psychosis which human beings have created when they abandon God and try to determine Good and Evil for themselves, not realizing that there is no basis for Good and Evil without God, which creates a negative dialectic, or downward spiral into chaos and evil.

I am not advocating a return to monarchy, simply pointing out that ideology is based on a determination of good and evil in a sort of pseudo-religious sense, and without the foundation of God, it quickly degenerates into an excuse to gain personal power, hypocrisy and totalitarianism.

 

[exnihilo]

That which is required to give everyone a home…

I dont see how everyone warrants a home. I think everyone should have a place to sleep at night. But that does not mean they should own a home. Many people who are in poverty are in such a position because they have chosen to not work, use impairing substances or suffer from personality issues. These people are not responsible enough to own a home. They cant take care of themselves let alone property.

That which results in needless misery and suffering…

Now we have to examine needless. Is some miserty and suffering needed? I think so. That is what encourages us to work. And if all suffering were evil then God would be evil in allowing it. Most of the time people who want communism, socialism or any radical transformation of the economy consider all suffering needless.

I have not stated that the government should own everything.

That is communism. Ownership is formal ownership or control. I can formally own something but if another entity controls it I dont really own it. Even in America, a country with supposedly private property, the government has ownership of the biggest property. Try not paying your property tax and you’ll find out who really owns your house.

 

[SonCatcher]

I consider that it has moral as well as legal legitimacy! The law should have a moral foundation.

There is never moral legitimacy in taking from another regardless of reason. By its very nature, any transfer that is not initiated by the original owner is a violation of the 7[sup]th[/sup] commandment. In the OT, the law was that if a person stole in order to meet his basic needs and was caught, he still had to pay restitution.

Moral legitimacy only exists when an action is freely chosen. The wealthy person who freely chooses to fund a soup kitchen has transferred his wealth to the poor in a completely legitimate fashion. No one took it from him. The benefactors did nothing to coerce him. The action is morally superior to a government levying taxes and using it for the same purpose.

 

[Crux_Sancta]

There is never moral legitimacy in taking from another regardless of reason. By its very nature, any transfer that is not initiated by the original owner is a violation of the 7[sup]th[/sup] commandment. In the OT, the law was that if a person stole in order to meet his basic needs and was caught, he still had to pay restitution.

Moral legitimacy only exists when an action is freely chosen. The wealthy person who freely chooses to fund a soup kitchen has transferred his wealth to the poor in a completely legitimate fashion. No one took it from him. The benefactors did nothing to coerce him. The action is morally superior to a government levying taxes and using it for the same purpose.

Taxation is not stealing. The government requires funds to operate and do what it needs to do, whether it’s a monarchy, a democracy, a dictatorship, all governments need money. You are correct that it is morally superior for an individual to provide charity out of his own good will than for the government to extract funds for the poor, but taxation for funding similar charities by the government is also legitimate, and whether the government is a democracy, a monarchy, or a dictatorship, the legitimacy of taxation stands.

Ideologies with simplistic, black and white ideas about how money should be gained and used by the government have created bad situations in this world. This is due to the fact that preconceived ideas about taxation and government spending prevent people from examining each situation as it comes to light and determining the best course of action…it is prescribing a black and white, good versus evil world view on a situation which does not call for it. Certainly there are things which can be done in economics which are always right and always wrong, such as corruption and fraud, but as a whole, economics is way too fluid to be lumped into an ideology without damaging results, and the results can be bad indeed.

 

[exnihilo]

Taxation is not stealing.

Why not? St. Augustine related a story about a pirate before Alexander the Great. Alexander asks the pirate “how dare he molest the sea”. “How dare you molest the whole world” the pirate replied. “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor”.

Taking what is not your is stealing. I’ll concede a political right to take property. But that right is not unlimited and must be for a direct and obvious public good. I’ll note Pope Benedict XVI recently said:

“Without justice – what else is the State but a great band of robbers?”, as Saint Augustine once said. We Germans know from our own experience that these words are no empty spectre. We have seen how power became divorced from right, how power opposed right and crushed it, so that the State became an instrument for destroying right – a highly organized band of robbers, capable of threatening the whole world and driving it to the edge of the abyss.

Both Pope Benedict and St. Augustine recognized that the state can be nothing but a gang of robbers. This can be so using merely the power of taxation.

 

[Crux_Sancta]

Why not? St. Augustine related a story about a pirate before Alexander the Great. Alexander asks the pirate “how dare he molest the sea”. “How dare you molest the whole world” the pirate replied. “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor”.

Taking what is not your is stealing. I’ll concede a political right to take property. But that right is not unlimited and must be for a direct and obvious public good. I’ll note Pope Benedict XVI recently said:

Both Pope Benedict and St. Augustine recognized that the state can be nothing but a gang of robbers. This can be so using merely the power of taxation.

What was that about “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…”, oh nevermind.

Robbery is for the good of one man; taxation is for the benefit of the whole of society (or at least, is supposed to be). If taxation is stealing, then government is never justified in taxation, and since printing money requires tax revenue, then the entire monetary system is based on stealing and is morally wrong, and if the monetary system is based on theft, then anyone who uses money is an accessory to thievery, and…

Doesn’t that seems like something a Communist or an Anarchist would say…hmm…

We do not live in the Garden of Eden. The fruit-bearing trees are owned by people now. A government of some sort is needed to regulate these trees, or we revert to barbarism. This government needs taxation to provide this regulation.

10,000 years ago, 60% of people died at the hands of another human being. Do you want to live like that? I doubt someone who is morally forbidden to lie, cheat, steal, or murder would answer in the positive to that question.

 

[SonCatcher]

What was that about “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…”, oh nevermind.

I never wrote that one shouldn’t pay taxes.

Robbery is for the good of one man; taxation is for the benefit of the whole of society (or at least, is supposed to be).

That’s the dream, isn’t it?

If taxation is stealing, then government is never justified in taxation, and since printing money requires tax revenue, then the entire monetary system is based on stealing and is morally wrong, and if the monetary system is based on theft, then anyone who uses money is an accessory to thievery, and…

Doesn’t that seems like something a Communist or an Anarchist would say…hmm…

Fascinating…

We do not live in the Garden of Eden. The fruit-bearing trees are owned by people now. A government of some sort is needed to regulate these trees, or we revert to barbarism. This government needs taxation to provide this regulation.

Quite true. Yet if it were possible that the government were supported by voluntary contributions only (and those contributions were adequate), would that not be preferable?

10,000 years ago, 60% of people died at the hands of another human being. Do you want to live like that? I doubt someone who is morally forbidden to lie, cheat, steal, or murder would answer in the positive to that question.

I wonder where the 60% statistic came from. Do you have access to 10,000 year-old actuary tables?

 

[eo_chibears]

Just wondering.

Thanks.

Don’t marxism and atheism go hand in hand? I thought atheism was a tenant of marxism, the two couldn’t be divided.

 

[Tenofovir]

The overall problem with Communism, as everyone has pointed out, is that at bottom it is the forced redistribution of goods. Pope Leo XIII, in Rerum Novarum, shows why this is wrong by defending a natural right to own property as essential to the good of the family and thus the good of the state. I would say that if you have a sort of “voluntary communism” that some people here propose, it would cease to be communism–at that point it is little more than charitably and humbly sharing one’s goods; charity must be done willingly. Remove the force from Communism, and it ceases to be Communism.

-ACEGC

The problem with Communism is not just that but a total control of all means of production and also a restructuring of society along non traditional lines. At the end of the day the family was no longer necessary, the Party would become the parents. Society had to be re-created that’s why in every country where Communism was implemented, the top 10-20% of the population - best workers, artists, writers, doctors etc had to be liquidated. Inequalities had to be removed and people made dependent on the Party. Ultimately somehow a government free society was to emerge.

 

[Tenofovir]

Don’t marxism and atheism go hand in hand? I thought atheism was a tenant of marxism, the two couldn’t be divided.

Yes, Marxism and atheism went hand in hand. You can’t have belief in God or a transcendent agent because the Party are to be the top authority. Also many atheists, left with a non-nihilistic longing in their lives, turned to Communism in the 1920s-40s.

 

[Crux_Sancta]

I never wrote that one shouldn’t pay taxes.



Fascinating…

Quite true. Yet if it were possible that the government were supported by voluntary contributions only (and those contributions were adequate), would that not be preferable?

I wonder where the 60% statistic came from. Do you have access to 10,000 year-old actuary tables?

Voluntary taxation?

…

You know, I may be way off here, but I once had a dream, in which Satan was sending Ayn Rand’s ghost to go around planting “objectivism trees” in Christian churches, not realizing that this was a diabolical plot by a bunch of libertarian atheists to destroy society and religion, to melt down civilization and let all the amoral psychopaths run around doing as they pleased while preying on the weak, gullible Christians, especially the ones who would buy into a philosophy which anyone who rationally examines it could see is an attempt by a bunch of wolves to get the shepherds out of the way so the sheep can be devoured, all while the rich sit around in mansions with automatic weapons getting high…

I don’t know, I could be totally wrong that that would be relevant to your post, and I hope so.

As for the death-rate:

“The archaeological record of war deaths at two dozen prehistoric sites ranges from 60 percent to about 4 percent, with an average of about 15 percent”…

OK, I made the mistake of quoting the high end, but the chances of another human being being killed by another human being are actually the lowest they have ever been in the history of civilization right now.

edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html

 

[Hokomai]

I agree that Marxism, as propounded by Marx, Engels, Lenin etc has materialism and the rejection of the existence of anything non-material as a fundamental philisophic belief which cannot be removed without seriously disturbing its internal consistency. (to the extent to which it is consistent) Where you could do an interesting thought experiment, however, would be to ask how things would have developed if the Bolsheviks, instead of devoting resources to attacking religious belief, just left it alone to ‘wither away’ as they expected it to do (while extending - as they did - religious freedom to all denominations). This is largely what happened in Yugoslavia, and communism managed quite well with high levels of religious freedom. It was competing nationalisms, some of them with religious elements, which in the end collapsed the state.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Yes, Marxism and atheism went hand in hand. You can’t have belief in God or a transcendent agent because the Party are to be the top authority. Also many atheists, left with a non-nihilistic longing in their lives, turned to Communism in the 1920s-40s.

I am sorry, but only somebody who has never read a real book on Marxism or spoken to one, would think this to be true; and even though I am not a Marxist I find this to be insulting. You should try to understand a movement before attacking it.

The Marxists felt it to be evident or at least apparent that the Church supported material oppression and poverty through the justification of private property. Whether they are mistaken or not, the atheism of many Marxists is purely a political reaction to a Church authority that try’s to justified greed on a political/economic scale and sanctify it through Catholic doctrine. Hence the belief that religion is a tool used to guilt trip people in to not rising up against their oppressors. The fear of God was thus perceived as a weapon against the poor. Catholicism was especially perceived as a political puppet used to moralise economic slavery. In reality the atheism of Marxism is very much a moral reaction to misleading representations of Church doctrine. Thus naturally they felt it necessary to reject the idea of private property on the basis that it allows individuals to have an absolute right to exploit human need at the expense of the weak and defenceless. Therefore Marxists have to reject God as necessarily a-prior false if belief in God justifies oppression and has with it the idea that you must not fight back. There is also a general rejection of religion among the founders of socialism because of the belief that it naturally leads to oppression on the basis of divine right; that man cannot have a better world so long as religion is in control. But that does not mean that a Marxist has to be a naturalist, unless he presumes that all belief God undermines human welfare; but that is not a necessary function of Marxist theory. You can be a political Marxist, and be religious at the same time.

Given the fact that it was Carl Marx who said that religion is the opium of the masses, it is not surprising that many atheist wannabes see socialism as the holy grail of metaphysical naturalism. But atheism in the Marxist sense of the word is contingent on the belief that the Church is a weapon against the poor; to keep them gullible and accepting of abuse.

 

[exnihilo]

What was that about “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…”, oh nevermind.

What exactly is Caesar’s has always been a difficult question. Caesar’s picture on the coin meant the coin was Caesars. But that does not mean all wealth and property is Caesar’s.

Robbery is for the good of one man; taxation is for the benefit of the whole of society (or at least, is supposed to be). If taxation is stealing, then government is never justified in taxation, and since printing money requires tax revenue, then the entire monetary system is based on stealing and is morally wrong, and if the monetary system is based on theft, then anyone who uses money is an accessory to thievery, and…

I’m not an anarchist. So I recognize the power of the state to tax for the public good. I just happen to think that public good should be very narrow. Additionally our knowledge of economics tells us that limited government leads to the most prosperity for all.

Regarding money I dont understand what you are saying. Having money does not require tax revenue. Money can, does, and did exist apart from the government. I’d suggest a good a good book, avaialable online, about money:

What has government done to our money?

We do not live in the Garden of Eden. The fruit-bearing trees are owned by people now. A government of some sort is needed to regulate these trees, or we revert to barbarism. This government needs taxation to provide this regulation.

Regulation is not really required. Private ownership and the basic principles of the law are more than sufficient to properly organize humanity in the best way. Regulation is mostly about rent seeking, restriction of competition and limitation of liability. We are constantly observing regulated businesses failing despite the regulation. The cry for more regulation is like the heroin addict demanding more to get high. The solution is not more of the same but a different direction=.

 

[Crux_Sancta]

What exactly is Caesar’s has always been a difficult question. Caesar’s picture on the coin meant the coin was Caesars. But that does not mean all wealth and property is Caesar’s.

I’m not an anarchist. So I recognize the power of the state to tax for the public good. I just happen to think that public good should be very narrow. Additionally our knowledge of economics tells us that limited government leads to the most prosperity for all.

Regarding money I dont understand what you are saying. Having money does not require tax revenue. Money can, does, and did exist apart from the government. I’d suggest a good a good book, avaialable online, about money:

What has government done to our money?

The point was that money requires someone to print it, and printing money costs money. If the government does not print it, then anyone can print it and it is worthless.

Regulation is not really required. Private ownership and the basic principles of the law are more than sufficient to properly organize humanity in the best way. Regulation is mostly about rent seeking, restriction of competition and limitation of liability. We are constantly observing regulated businesses failing despite the regulation. The cry for more regulation is like the heroin addict demanding more to get high. The solution is not more of the same but a different direction=.

 

[tonyrey]

There is never moral legitimacy in taking

 

[exnihilo]

The point was that money requires someone to print it, and printing money costs money. If the government does not print it, then anyone can print it and it is worthless.

Again I’ll refer you to a good book that helps to better understand money. We are very accustomed to thinking of money as being the pieces of paper and coins the government issues. It is true that minting costs money. But government is not required for money to exist.

What has government done to our money?

You are not living in reality, or deliberately wish to destroy the world if you sincerely think that at this juncture.

How is that? The US has a very regulated economy. The securities and banking industry is highly regulated and even has government insurance programs. And yet according to the government it would have collapsed if they had not taken taxpayer money. You should study moral hazard - the economic concept that when you lessen risk people increase risk in other ways.

 

[SonCatcher]

You know, I may be way off here, but I once had a dream, in which Satan was sending Ayn Rand’s ghost to go around planting “objectivism trees” in Christian churches, not realizing that this was a diabolical plot by a bunch of libertarian atheists to destroy society and religion, to melt down civilization and let all the amoral psychopaths run around doing as they pleased while preying on the weak, gullible Christians, especially the ones who would buy into a philosophy which anyone who rationally examines it could see is an attempt by a bunch of wolves to get the shepherds out of the way so the sheep can be devoured, all while the rich sit around in mansions with automatic weapons getting high…

I don’t know, I could be totally wrong that that would be relevant to your post, and I hope so.

Sorry, I fail to see any relevance.

As for the death-rate:

“The archaeological record of war deaths at two dozen prehistoric sites ranges from 60 percent to about 4 percent, with an average of about 15 percent”…

OK, I made the mistake of quoting the high end, but the chances of another human being being killed by another human being are actually the lowest they have ever been in the history of civilization right now.

edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html

Two dozen is a rather small sample but given that tribal societies have been known to destroy each other in war, it isn’t surprising.

To prevent starvation is an excellent reason…

It certainly reduces culpability in that what would normally be mortally sinful would in the extreme case be only venial or not sinful at all.

The OT law has been superseded by Christ’s law of love.

[BIBLEDRB]Matthew 5:18[/BIBLEDRB]
The principle remains regardless. What is changed is our reaction. If in OT times thief could be punished only if caught, we are called to forgive and feed him.

So you would allow people to starve to death rather than levy taxes on the rich?

As a practical matter, it is impossible to fund a government without some form of involuntary taxation. My writings in this thread have been far from practical. Intentionally so, for no real government in history has conformed itself fully to Christian virtue.

Many of the best programs for feeding the hungry do not involve the government, however.