Marxism

[DL82]

After Pope John Paul II condemned the Worker Priests for their use of marxist analysis (NB not marxist politics, just the intellectual techniques taught by marxist sociology), is it fair to say that as Catholics we should be intellectually oppposed to any theories relying on dialectical materialism as a method of inquiry?

Does that also rule out post-marxist ideas such as the postmodernism of Foucault?

If so, does that commit us to the straight-jacket of all being Aristotelians? As a philosophy graduate and graduate sociology student, I can’t stomach that idea, it’s 300 years out of date!

 

[vern_humphrey]

Here’s a hint – Marx, Foucalt and Aristote aren’t the only people ever to have an idea or two.

Nor did Dialectical Materialism ever discover a cure for any disease, manufacture a single washing machine, or grow so much as an acre of corn.

 

[Ignatius]

After Pope John Paul II condemned the Worker Priests for their use of marxist analysis (NB not marxist politics, just the intellectual techniques taught by marxist sociology), is it fair to say that as Catholics we should be intellectually oppposed to any theories relying on dialectical materialism as a method of inquiry?

Does that also rule out post-marxist ideas such as the postmodernism of Foucault?

If so, does that commit us to the straight-jacket of all being Aristotelians? As a philosophy graduate and graduate sociology student, I can’t stomach that idea, it’s 300 years out of date!

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Don’t be ridiculous. That proposition is completely specious and entirely without basis. The most meager scholarship on the subject will reveal that there are myriad philosophical positions in both agreement and contradiction with the sparce set of examples that you mentioned. Go do some homework!

 

[Catholig]

If so, does that commit us to the straight-jacket of all being Aristotelians? As a philosophy graduate and graduate sociology student, I can’t stomach that idea, it’s 300 years out of date!

Why don’t you like Aristotle?

Catholig

 

[Ignatius]

If you would like a truely cogent presentation of a 20th century Philosopher, read Dietrich von Hildebrand.

 

[Peregrino]

Besides their atheism, Marx and Foucault present too much of a challenge to the authority and structural control to the institutional Church. I would seek to understand these ideas, and then seek to understand why the Church opposes them. All ideas have merit, even if only as a way of pointing out where the truth doesn’t lie.

 

[Semper_Fi_1]

If you would like a truely cogent presentation of a 20th century Philosopher, read Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Hildebrand is great.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Besides their atheism, Marx and Foucault present too much of a challenge to the authority and structural control to the institutional Church. I would seek to understand these ideas, and then seek to understand why the Church opposes them. All ideas have merit, even if only as a way of pointing out where the truth doesn’t lie.

In the Infantry we have a similar system for locating enemy minefields – it’s called “Detection by detonation.”

 

[ribozyme]

After Pope John Paul II condemned the Worker Priests for their use of marxist analysis (NB not marxist politics, just the intellectual techniques taught by marxist sociology), is it fair to say that as Catholics we should be intellectually oppposed to any theories relying on dialectical materialism as a method of inquiry?

Does that also rule out post-marxist ideas such as the postmodernism of Foucault?

If so, does that commit us to the straight-jacket of all being Aristotelians? As a philosophy graduate and graduate sociology student, I can’t stomach that idea, it’s 300 years out of date!

I do not understand the antipathy towards Marxism. Don’t Marxist want to great an egalitarian society where social inequality will be eradicated? I do not understand how that is a bad idea.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I do not understand the antipathy towards Marxism. Don’t Marxist want to great an egalitarian society where social inequality will be eradicated? I do not understand how that is a bad idea.

Read The Man Who Walked Through Time. Colin Fletcher, the author has a section on people who came to grief hiking through the Grand Canyon. In one instance, a group of boys led by a priest ran out of water. Becoming irratioinal with thirst, the priest insisted they take off their shoes, throw them down the canyon and climb down to the river.

Now how could** that** be a bad idea? What could possibly be wrong with climbing down the Grand Canyon to get water? (Well, how about the fact that the priest and most of the boys died, and the survivor climbed back up and was found by a patrol on the rim?)

Now, what could be wrong with Marxism? (Well, how about the fact that every nation that has embraced Marxism has wound up being ruled by a brutal personality cult dictator?)

As Zbignew Brzinski (President Carter’s National Security Advisor) said, “Communism is the greatest disaster ever to overtake the human race.” And if you tot up all the people killed by all those brutal personality cult dictators, he was clearly right.

 

[ribozyme]

Read The Man Who Walked Through Time. Colin Fletcher, the author has a section on people who came to grief hiking through the Grand Canyon. In one instance, a group of boys led by a priest ran out of water. Becoming irratioinal with thirst, the priest insisted they take off their shoes, throw them down the canyon and climb down to the river.

Now how could** that** be a bad idea? What could possibly be wrong with climbing down the Grand Canyon to get water? (Well, how about the fact that the priest and most of the boys died, and the survivor climbed back up and was found by a patrol on the rim?)

Now, what could be wrong with Marxism? (Well, how about the fact that every nation that has embraced Marxism has wound up being ruled by a brutal personality cult dictator?)

As Zbignew Brzinski (President Carter’s National Security Advisor) said, “Communism is the greatest disaster ever to overtake the human race.” And if you tot up all the people killed by all those brutal personality cult dictators, he was clearly right.

Gee… I sound like a moron…

I meant to say “create” not “great”…

 

[vern_humphrey]

Gee… I sound like a moron…

I meant to say “create” not “great”…

The point is, what Marx intended is one thing, what happens when his receipe is applied is another.

The inherent flaw in Marxism is that it requires a dictator. Even Marx realized that when he spoke of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” What he failed to understand (and I believe the failure was deliberate) was that a dictatorship ultimately results in absolute power falling into the hands of one man. And that has happened in every country that has attempted to apply Communism.

 

[ribozyme]

Read The Man Who Walked Through Time. Colin Fletcher, the author has a section on people who came to grief hiking through the Grand Canyon. In one instance, a group of boys led by a priest ran out of water. Becoming irratioinal with thirst, the priest insisted they take off their shoes, throw them down the canyon and climb down to the river.

Now how could** that** be a bad idea? What could possibly be wrong with climbing down the Grand Canyon to get water? (Well, how about the fact that the priest and most of the boys died, and the survivor climbed back up and was found by a patrol on the rim?)

Now, what could be wrong with Marxism? (Well, how about the fact that every nation that has embraced Marxism has wound up being ruled by a brutal personality cult dictator?)

As Zbignew Brzinski (President Carter’s National Security Advisor) said, “Communism is the greatest disaster ever to overtake the human race.” And if you tot up all the people killed by all those brutal personality cult dictators, he was clearly right.

I do not think that pursuing a conservative political agenda will do anything to alleviate socioeconomical inequality. Peace and justice is only possible when members of the human species are equal to each other.

The main reason I am opposed to “science” books such as The Bell Curve is that they provide a justification for the “superior” to exploit those who are “subhuman”. Book such as The Bell Curve tell us that we should embrace inequality and maintain the status quo as the “subhumans” do not deserve to succeed in life.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I do not think that pursuing a conservative political agenda will do anything to alleviate socioeconomical inequality. Peace and justice is only possible when members of the human species are equal to each other.

Right. Peace and justice are achieved by creating artificial famines (as Stalin did in the Ukraine), putting people in the Gulag, executing millions of “rich farmers” (as the Chinese Communists did) or driving people out of the cities into the countryside and executing on an assembly line basois those who protest, or whomever the communist cadres fancy, as Pol Pot did.

Got it!

The main reason I am opposed to “science” books such as The Bell Curve is that they provide a justification for the “superior” to exploit those who are “subhuman”. Book such as The Bell Curve tell us that we should embrace inequality and maintain the status quo as the “subhumans” do not deserve to succeed in life.

And what has that got to do with this subject?

You are aware that various communist countries have tried to breed “superior” humans, are you not?

Neither the United States nor any other capitalist nation that I know of has tried that – nor have we embraced forced abortion in the name of “population control” – a hallmark of some Communist nations.

 

[ribozyme]

Right. Peace and justice are achieved by creating artificial famines (as Stalin did in the Ukraine), putting people in the Gulag, executing millions of “rich farmers” (as the Chinese Communists did) or driving people out of the cities into the countryside and executing on an assembly line basois those who protest, or whomever the communist cadres fancy, as Pol Pot did.

Got it!

And what has that got to do with this subject?

You are aware that various communist countries have tried to breed “superior” humans, are you not?

Neither the United States nor any other capitalist nation that I know of has tried that – nor have we embraced forced abortion in the name of “population control” – a hallmark of some Communist nations.

I am not arguing for communism… I am arguing that the communists emphasis on the formation of an egalitarian society should be emulated by everyone. We should not only focus on the egregious crimes against humanity that communist regimes committed.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I am not arguing for communism… I am arguing that the communists emphasis on the formation of an egalitarian society should be emulated by everyone. We should not only focus on the egregious crimes against humanity that communist regimes committed.

Right – kind of like saying, “Well, I know the Khmer Rouge suffocated hundreds of thousand of people with plastic bags, but, hey, they meant to form an egalitarian society.”

Zbignew Brzinski was right. Marxism is a disaster – a horrible, bloody disaster.

 

[DL82]

This has become a discussion on Marxism as a political system, which is evidently a problem.

My point is that the Marxist method of enquiry gives us a solid critique of the failings and exploitations that exist within capitalism. Even though the solutions Marx proposes are clearly flawed and have failed horrifically throughout the world, the criticisms he makes of capitalism are still intellectually valid. (Jo Woolf writes very well on this topic for the post-communist world if anybody’s interested.)

When the Liberation Theologians used methods from Marxism to criticise the capitalist system and to propose a system based on Christian values of poverty, JPII criticised them and basically pulled the plug on the whole Worker Priests operation, which was both Christianising Latin-American socialism and putting a social conscience into Latin-American Christianity.

Why should an intellectual method be so opposed to the Catholic faith?

 

[vern_humphrey]

This has become a discussion on Marxism as a political system, which is evidently a problem.

My point is that the Marxist method of enquiry gives us a solid critique of the failings and exploitations that exist within capitalism. Even though the solutions Marx proposes are clearly flawed and have failed horrifically throughout the world, the criticisms he makes of capitalism are still intellectually valid. (Jo Woolf writes very well on this topic for the post-communist world if anybody’s interested.)

No, Marxism doesn’t give us a solid critique of anything. If it did, Marx would never have produced the disasterous reciepe he did.

Remember, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The Marxist pudding has proven highly poisonous.

When the Liberation Theologians used methods from Marxism to criticise the capitalist system and to propose a system based on Christian values of poverty, JPII criticised them and basically pulled the plug on the whole Worker Priests operation, which was both Christianising Latin-American socialism and putting a social conscience into Latin-American Christianity.

Why should an intellectual method be so opposed to the Catholic faith?

Because it’s a false method. John Paul the Great had lived and suffered under Communism. He knew, first hand, how fataly wrong Marx’ approach was.

 

[lumendelumine]

The ultimate problem of Marxism is that it is wrong about human nature because it is Pelagian*. That’s why it failed. The basic idea of Marxism is that if only people were economically and socially equal, then they would somehow spontaneously become edifying and ‘good’ members of society. But of course they do not.

And the idea that everyone gets the same share of every good produced could also only be put into practice where Original Sin (and thus, selfishness) did not exist. But then, if Original Sin did not exist, there would be no Marxism because there would be no social injustice…

The only thing that’s right about Marxism is its indignation with social injustice. But its economic analysis, its designation of human historical and social development, the solutions it proposes etc. are but all wrong.

Ribozyme, DL82,
maybe you should study Catholic social teaching better. Its aim is to fight social injustice, not social inequality. The latter cannot be completely scrapped (as the Marxists would have liked to), as such a “scrapping” would itself be an injustice. But what we should and do fight against as Catholics according to Catholic social teaching, is the exploitation of people, their treatment as chattel etc.

Catholic social teaching is thus not about equality or inequality, it is about human dignity and justice. But not so much through political action (though that may play a role) and certainly not through the imposition of some ideology, but by both material and spiritual help and a building up from the grassroots level. In fact, the Church is very much for grassroots initiatives…

*I’m quite convinced that Pelagianism is one of the most deadly ideas ever invented by the human mind. It is the basis of every ideology because every ideology maintains that you only have to change people’s attitude and behavior and then somehow everything and everyone will become good and perfect. But of course you can’t change people just like that. Only God can do that, and He does that on an individual, person-to-person basis, not in the one-size-fits-all style of political and social ideologies.

 

[Peregrino]

Vern Wrote:

“The inherent flaw in Marxism is that it requires a dictator. Even Marx realized that when he spoke of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.””

Actually Vern, Marx considered democracy to be inherently compatible with socialism. (see Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe vol I). Your “command” of Marxism seems more ideological than scholarly. Erich Fromm wrote “that Marx cold be regarded as an enemy of freedom was made possible only by the fantastic fraud of Stalin in presuming to talk in the name of Marx” (Marx’s concept of Man). You seem to make the classic error of confusing Soviet communism with Marxism. Relying on such an error will provide you with endless ammunition “against” your construct of what you think Marxism really is about.

Just as there has been several interpretations of “true Christianity”, so has there been several interps of Marxism. I would submit that if you took a snapshot of the Renaissance Popes and called that “true Catholicism”, many would disagree.

Ribozyme was right, we should want to emulate the egalitarianism of Marxism. Marx was inherently concerned with freedom and equality. Marx’s problem was that in his rejection of the social (and intellectual) control elements of religion, he denied God and the role of salvation in history.