Pope a Marxist?

[MacQ]

I guess this hits the nail, he is neither Marxist nor capitalist.

The Pope, IMHO, is not saying that the State should distribute it by force. Rather, aspire and create a system that will help the citizens distribute the wealth (with charity).

:tiphat:

YES!!!

 

[MacQ]

I totally believe in capitalism, and I am completely against Marxism, but what is happening in capitalism today is not fair at all. Through taxation, the wealthy have so many options to hide their wealth and not pay any taxes on it at all, and on the other hand, the middle-class is paying all the bill to run the government.

In other words, capitalism today is forcibly taking money from the middle-class and indirectly giving it to the wealthy, instead of the other way around.

That doesn’t square with the FACT that the wealthy few pay the lions share of the taxes.
You might also want to look into the FACTS about revenue received from corporations.

 

[edwest2]

I think you need to better acquaint yourself with Catholic Social Teaching, for everything Pope Francis has said stems from this body of doctrine. In suggesting that the Pope is preaching Marxism, you are therefore inadvertently saying that the Catholic Church adheres to Marxism. Surely you recognize that such an idea is preposterous in the extreme?

In 1967 Venerable Pope Paul VI issued a social encyclical called, “Populorum Progressio”.

It spurred a very negative reaction from right-wing sections of the American press; with accusations that Paul VI was a “Marxist”.

The encyclical was published to direct world economies to serve mankind. In this respect it was highly critical of both liberal capitalism and Marxist-Leninism.

This denunciation of liberal capitalistic economic theories was immediately recognized by the American Press back in 1967. Their response to the encyclical was scathing, accusing Pope Paul VI of espousing “souped-up Marxism”.

The New York Times called Populorum progressio “strongly leftist, even Marxist in tone” despite the fact that it explicitly attacked both Capitalism and Marxism (Source: New York Times Editorial (29 March 1967)).

Sound familiar?

History repeating itself.

That was very helpful. Thank you.

Ed

 

[MacQ]

Of course it all depends what is meant by “Marxism”. If you mean a socio-economic system by which wealth is forcibly re-distributed to an idle class of freeloaders, sure, that’s a bad thing. The political notion of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” is even worse.
.

The one sounds alot like what some in our fair land want now. Forcible redistribution.
The dictatorship comes much later. You must first inure people to rely on the state.
You do this by shrinking the options they have in the private sector. Put the boot down on business and entrepreneurs who might provide people with incomes and jobs outside of government (otherwise known as free citizens).
Happening now.

 

[pristine2]

The one sounds alot like what some in our fair land want now. Forcible redistribution.
The dictatorship comes much later. You must first inure people to rely on the state.
You do this by shrinking the options they have in the private sector. Put the boot down on business and entrepreneurs who might provide people with incomes and jobs outside of government (otherwise known as free citizens).
Happening now.

One should be equally skeptical of state and corporate power, especially when they converge. There’s a giant difference between the free market and corporate rule.

There’s a huge difference, too, between a business born of sweat, luck and innovation – and self-perpetuating cartels that enjoy guaranteed profits from the state, purchase political influence and flood the media with disinformation.

And there’s a big difference between streamlining government functions and outsourcing them to corporations, almost always at higher cost and lower accountability.

The interests of corporations don’t always match the sovereign interest, or the interests of the people. If the marketplace is drowning in government money, and controlled by a handful of entities committed to eliminating competition, it simply cannot function as Adam Smith envisaged.

Tyranny comes in many forms. You’re wise to be suspicious of government. But there are enormous threats to liberty from government AND large corporate entities, especially financial institutions. To give corporations a free pass is civilisational suicide.

 

[pristine2]

That doesn’t square with the FACT that the wealthy few pay the lions share of the taxes.
You might also want to look into the FACTS about revenue received from corporations.

Ok, some facts:

• The vast majority of corporate tax revenue comes from small businesses, not large multinational corporations, many of which now pay no federal taxes at all.
• Corporate taxes make up about 10% of the total federal tax haul. Income tax makes up nearly 50%, and payroll taxes about 35%.,

cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3822

 

[pristine2]

It isn’t taxation that creates the problem, the problem of distribution down to individuals is that we have a state supported system in which corporates are individuals, in the eyes of the law. That stakes the deck against individual participation in the economy.

What a lucid and wonderfully readable reply! Your analysis is spot on, and expressed far better than I could have managed – and I write for a living.

 

[gntlmnr]

The provision in the law for corporations is what allowed for the kind of capital formation that fueled America’s explosive success economically, which benefited everyone in the entire world. Capitalists are more willing to invest in steel mills, auto companies, technology companies, and energy companies if they have limited liability. Exposing them to unlimited personal liability would kill such activities because some of these are dangerous activities that will occasionally hurt someone. As a matter of public policy, we have decided that the rewards outweigh the risks.

It is better to study and understand economic systems than to sling unfounded criticisms, such as “corporations exist to protect fat-cat capitalists so they can just get richer”, which is the kind of narrative we hear so often from the uninformed. Everyone benefits from the existence of corporations, particularly those who seek employment outside of agriculture and local mom-and-pop businesses.

In theory, I completely agree with your analysis, but let’s look at reality now. In reality today, the rich are definitely getting richer, and the poor are definitely getting poorer. Today, more and more people are having to depend on the government in one form or another for their daily survival, and the middle-class is being gradually wiped out.

So I think we heard enough beautiful theory, we need to look more at reality. If we want beautiful theory, then nothing is more beautiful than communism in theory, but the facts demonstrated that communism doesn’t work.

 

[Sochi]

That doesn’t square with the FACT that the wealthy few pay the lions share of the taxes.
You might also want to look into the FACTS about revenue received from corporations.

That’s an old pill, one of many to dull and lull the senses, because the fact is that the rich are SO rich that a tiny bit of tax from them dwarfs what an average individual pays.

youtube.com/watch?v=JTj9AcwkaKM

Kapishne?

 

[Sochi]

Perhaps you are also one of the ones who still believe that the Federal Reserve is either federal or a reserve. It is emphatically neither, as it is a private corporation with a license to create money. It is why that guy on the far right has all those bars. To put it in numbers, if that 100 people each had a yard on a football field, the middle person would have a stack of $100 bill about 4" high, representing the median income at about $40K. That guy on the far right would have a stack about 25 miles high. So you might begin to understand why it looks like the rich pay the most. In fact, their income–because they invest in paper and lobbyists, not creating jobs, is taxed at a significantly lower rate than the secretaries who work in their offices, the teachers who teacher their kids, etc.

 

[Abu]

In August 5, 200, Donald Devine wrote Papal Freedom Regression?
Pope Benedict, in Caritas in Veritate, has examined Populorum Progressio’s empirical assumptions specifically requiring that ‘an evaluation is needed of the different terms in which the problem of development is presented today, as compared with forty years ago.’

“Benedict reaffirms the ‘importance of distributive justice and social justice’ and the social responsibility of business. That vision is ‘still timely,’ says Benedict; but the ‘world that Pope Paul VI had before him’ has changed….Supporters of economic and social freedom should be reassured that this papal argument directly follows market theorist and Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek’s prescription that just rules must come first and distributional results must proceed from them rather than being allocated by political authorities afterwards.

“For Benedict, redistribution comes from politics, yes, but through prior rules adopted by people ‘who freely choose’ them in the spirit of the unconditional gift. What spirit could be freer or more in accord with Hayek’s logic, including when he used religious orders and local communities as examples of communal actions freely undertaken and not at all inconsistent with the market? Benedict explains that a loving gift is not mere sentimentality’ that is ‘detached from ethical living’ by political or economic ideologies where ‘social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power.’

“Benedict’s criticism of political redistribution afterwards as a replacement for gift and free exchange is actually a great advancement of John Paul, to say nothing of the Hayekian paradigm. Benedict goes well beyond nation and state or even tradition to make human freedom unalienable.

“Benedict identifies liberty’s components as the individual and the freely established groupings he or she creates, which freedom remains inalienable even within the state, very much including the democratic welfare state.
“Subsidiarity is first and foremost a form of assistance to the human person via the autonomy of intermediate bodies. Such assistance is offered when individuals or groups are unable to accomplish something on their own, and it is always designed to achieve their emancipation, because it fosters freedom and participation through assumption of responsibility. Subsidiarity respects personal dignity by recognizing in the person a subject who is always capable of giving something to others. By considering reciprocity as the heart of what it is to be a human being, subsidiarity is the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state.”

This accurately reveals subsidiarity and unalienable freedom as essential, against a “welfare state”.

George Weigel remarks “Moreover, Centesimus Annus jettisoned the idea of a ‘Catholic third way’ that was somehow ‘between’ or ‘beyond’ or ‘above’ capitalism and socialism — a favourite dream of Catholics ranging from G. K. Chesterton to John A. Ryan and Ivan Illich.”

 

[openmind77]

This accurately reveals subsidiarity and unalienable freedom as essential, against a “welfare state”.

Jesus talks about hunger, thirst, sickness,clothing, shelter and prison in Mathew 25:42-45.

Does **He **mention this ‘unalienable freedom’ as essential anywhere?

What good is this freedom if there are so many sick or starving or homeless in such a rich country?

 

[MacQ]

One should be equally skeptical of state and corporate power, especially when they converge. There’s a giant difference between the free market and corporate rule.

There’s a huge difference, too, between a business born of sweat, luck and innovation – and self-perpetuating cartels that enjoy guaranteed profits from the state, purchase political influence and flood the media with disinformation.

And there’s a big difference between streamlining government functions and outsourcing them to corporations, almost always at higher cost and lower accountability.

The interests of corporations don’t always match the sovereign interest, or the interests of the people. If the marketplace is drowning in government money, and controlled by a handful of entities committed to eliminating competition, it simply cannot function as Adam Smith envisaged.

Tyranny comes in many forms. You’re wise to be suspicious of government. But there are enormous threats to liberty from government AND large corporate entities, especially financial institutions. To give corporations a free pass is civilisational suicide.

No argument there!

 

[MacQ]

That’s an old pill, one of many to dull and lull the senses, because the fact is that the rich are SO rich that a tiny bit of tax from them dwarfs what an average individual pays.

youtube.com/watch?v=JTj9AcwkaKM

Kapishne?

No need to condescend.
I personally think that everyone should pay tax at the same rate. Even people on welfare. That way some would not be so apt to lobby for others to pay more. And that furthermore, the tax rates should be exceedingly low…only enough to cover defense and the truly common needs…not the corrupt and bloated bureaucracy of czars we have now.

The person I replied to asserted that the rich were hiding their money in investments. Yes they are…thanks to our current govt policy encouraging them to do that instead of investing in business startups and jobs. Mr. Obama abhors private sector economy.
And he loves for people to blame the “rich”.

I also do not subscribe to the notion that corporations are inherently evil.

 

[Sochi]

Agree very much. But we know that if we apply a psychological profile to the activities and interests of corporation (since the SCOTUS claims they are “people,” which I will believe when one of them goes to the electric chair) They come up as sociopaths in all pertinent tests. Have you ever seen the documentary The Corporation?And there is the astonishing infiltration of every branch of government by powerful business interests and lobbyists.

 

[Cardamom19]

Why is any of this an issue?

The Eucharist is still Jesus, Mary is still the Mother of God, the sun will still rise tomorrow and I’ll hit the snooze button for ten extra minutes, get up and have to drive my girls to school.

What the Pope said, or what the media says that the Pope said, about economic systems is number 98,647 on the list of things I have to worry about today. I still have to work for a living, pay my bills in order to live, and the Pastor of my parish hasn’t announced that everyone has to forfeit half his paycheck.

-Tim-

It’s important because of the Social Teaching of The Church. Since “Rerum Novarum” in the 19th Century, successive popes have published important documents concerned with society, the right to work, economics and social justice. When the present pope asks for ways be found to eliminate poverty, he is talking about the injustice of poverty worldwide. Of course, Americans immediately suspect creeping socialism but that’s because they cannot accept a critique of modern capitalism. And yet we are just beginning to emerge from a devastating crisis caused primarily by the greed of bankers - key players in the Capitalist system. Reform may be difficult but it sure is going to be needed - and soon.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

Just because some Tea Party economist finds the Pope’s statement not precise enough and disagrees with them, does not mean that Pope Francis does not fully understand free enterprise.

Actually just the fact that the Pope can see though the fog created constantly by the mythology of ‘job creators’, ‘hard workers’, ‘lazy poor’ and actually appreciate the human condition shows a very deep understand of economic reality. But then that is just my opinion, just as the above is the opinion of Mr. gregg.

Officially Pope Francis stands by Catholic Social Teaching; he advised people to study the Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching (Evangelium Gaudium, #184); and he said in the same article, quoting Paul VI, “It is up to the Christian communities to analyze with objectivity the situation which is proper to their own country.” In EG Francis mentions lack of economic “opportunity” (#s 54, 59, 209) as a social ill three times, not lack of entitlements. Twice he rejects the idea of the “welfare” state/mentality (202, 204). And he cites the teaching of Paul VI in Popularum Progressio that all people should exercise individual initiative to be artisans of their own destiny. (190)

The Compendium rejects collectivism, class warfare, and dependency on government entitlements, and it encourages individual and collective initiative, private ownership of property and the means of production, entrepreneurial ability, education, competition, legitimate profit, and regulated capitalism (i.e., government ensuring a level playing field).

It should be remembered that Francis came from Latin America which generally has one of the most corrupt, maladaptive, and exclusionary economies in the world. When the Spanish pulled out the situation was and still is: “a few wealthy families have amassed vast amounts of land, money, and power with the help of special privileges and restrictive laws made by friendly government officials. . . . These few wealthy families typically own nearly all the land, have government-protected monopolies for the products of their companies, and habitually violate the law while knowing that they will never be convicted by their friends, who are the powerful judges. These families might own the only businesses that receive huge government contracts.” (Grudman & Asmus, The Poverty of Nations,76)

This is the whole set of injustices that fomented Liberation Theology.

Further, the Spanish even when in South America never taught them how to generate wealth: they just mined gold and silver and bought everything they needed to make lavish displays of prosperity as the wealthiest nation on earth in the 16th c. By the mid 17th c when the bullion flow stopped the crown was deep in debt. Since it neither learned to generate wealth nor the habits and practices necessary, it is now one of the poorer countries. (Landis, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 173)

Francis’ tweets and off the cuff comments come out of this Latin American experience. . . true economies of exclusion.

 

[MacQ]

Officially Pope Francis stands by Catholic Social Teaching; he advised people to study the Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching (Evangelium Gaudium, #184); and he said in the same article, quoting Paul VI, “It is up to the Christian communities to analyze with objectivity the situation which is proper to their own country.” In EG Francis mentions lack of economic “opportunity” (#s 54, 59, 209) as a social ill three times, not lack of entitlements. Twice he rejects the idea of the “welfare” state/mentality (202, 204). And he cites the teaching of Paul VI in Popularum Progressio that all people should exercise individual initiative to be artisans of their own destiny. (190)

The Compendium rejects collectivism, class warfare, and dependency on government entitlements, and it encourages individual and collective initiative, private ownership of property and the means of production, entrepreneurial ability, education, competition, legitimate profit, and regulated capitalism (i.e., government ensuring a level playing field).

It should be remembered that Francis came from Latin America which generally has one of the most corrupt, maladaptive, and exclusionary economies in the world. When the Spanish pulled out the situation was and still is: “a few wealthy families have amassed vast amounts of land, money, and power with the help of special privileges and restrictive laws made by friendly government officials. . . . These few wealthy families typically own nearly all the land, have government-protected monopolies for the products of their companies, and habitually violate the law while knowing that they will never be convicted by their friends, who are the powerful judges. These families might own the only businesses that receive huge government contracts.” (Grudman & Asmus, The Poverty of Nations,76)

This is the whole set of injustices that fomented Liberation Theology.

Further, the Spanish even when in South America never taught them how to generate wealth: they just mined gold and silver and bought everthing it needed to make lavish displays of prosperity as the wealthiest nation on earth in the 16th c. By the mid 17th c when the bullion flow stopped the crown was deep in debt. Since it neither learned to generate wealth nor the habits and practices necessary, it is now one of the poorer countries. (Landis, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 173)

Francis’ tweets and off the cuff comments come out of this Latin American experience. . . true economies of exclusion.

 

[MacQ]

It’s important because of the Social Teaching of The Church. Since “Rerum Novarum” in the 19th Century, successive popes have published important documents concerned with society, the right to work, economics and social justice. When the present pope asks for ways be found to eliminate poverty, he is talking about the injustice of poverty worldwide. Of course, Americans immediately suspect creeping socialism but that’s because they cannot accept a critique of modern capitalism. And yet we are just beginning to emerge from a devastating crisis caused primarily by the greed of bankers - key players in the Capitalist system. Reform may be difficult but it sure is going to be needed - and soon.

Very true. I think we Americans, conservatives in particular, are a tad oversensitive about a challenge to capitalism. On the other hand, we are understandably defensive in the face of a president who we see as killing jobs and opportunity, and fomenting class warfare with his inequality schtick…and he would like to co-opt the Pope with the aid of a press that doesn’t mind propagandizing what the holy father actually says.

 

[shelby_sun]

Bottom line is that The Pope can say whatever he wants to on this issue over and over again, governments around the world could careless what he has to say on the matter. Can anyone really believe that China, Russia, Iraq, etc. bother to even listen. He must preach it as the teaching of the Catholic Church, but as it the past it won’t change a thing.