It’s not a bizarre assertion at all if you understand Marx beyond the American caricature of Marx. It’s well documented that John Paul II’s social ethics and anthropology is heavily influenced by Marx, especially in the emphasis on the centrality of labor to human life. One of the Jesuits who drafted Quadragesimo Anno was also strongly influenced by Marx.
Marxian means influenced by Marx.
Marxism is a historical theory that emphasizes dialectical materialism and historical determinism. It is absolutely not a synonym for communism or socialism and there are numerous anti-Marxists communists (such as Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin) and anti-Marxist socialists (such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Benjamin Tucker).
Marxists are those who accept the premises of Marxism and seek to further the revolution that Marx predicted would occur to end capitalism. Marx was not the sole theorist of his time, it’s also heavily influenced by the ideas of Friedrich Engels, and he did not consider himself a Marxist. There are numerous variants of Marxist thought, and some have as much to do with each other as apples and oranges.
Of course, there are elements of Marxist thought that are irreconcilable with Catholic thought, but this nonsense about everything Marx said automatically being wrong has to stop.
I fully realize that Americans tend to caricature Marx (just as Europeans and others caricature American thought–this is, after all, human nature). However, you have offered no specific documentation at all to suggest that Catholic social teaching is influenced by Marxism. Pope Leo XIII taught the first identifiable social teaching in 1891 with
Rerum Novarum, which is based on Thomistic Catholic understanding of natural law, and the writings of German bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler of the era–the closest that one could say that socialism came to the Church’s teachings, and this was certainly not Marxism. Pope Pius XI reiterated this in *Quadragesimo Anno *forty years later, as did Blessed John XXIII in *Mater et Magistra *in 1961, this time applying it to the post-WII world and the increasing industrialization in the Third World. Paul VI contributed to this body of teaching in
Populorum Progressio in 1967, especially as it relates to developing nations. And, of course, Blessed John Paul II reiterated Leo XIII’s teachings in
Centesimus Annus and Paul’s teaching in
Sollicitudo rei socialis.
While there naturally are some tenets in these encyclicals that match the priorities of Marx and socialism, they also condemn totalitarianism of any sort, especially communism, which they name. Pius XI even stated that one could not be a Catholic and a true socialist at the same time. Blessed John Paul II was especially clear on condemning socialist extremes, as well as the abuses of extreme capitalism. Pope Francis recently restated the latter in
Evangelii Gaudiae.
So again, I respectfully ask, where is Marx in the Church’s teaching, and especially that of Blessed John Paul II? Where do the pontiffs identify Marxism as a partial source of papal teaching? And I mean the pontiffs, not some left-leaning academic whose personal interpretations make this claim?
