Pope a Marxist?

[Abu]

lynnvinc #114
Marx followed Christian principles and tried to correct a very evil form of laissez faire capitalism.

False. As you should know from earlier threads Marx followed no “Christian” principles. The system itself is gravely flawed, unlike the free enterprise laws developed by the great Catholic Late Scholastics.
Pius XI declared emphatically in Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, #120:
“We have also summoned Communism and Socialism again to judgment and have found all their forms, even the most modified, to wander far from the precepts of the Gospel.” (#128).

The sneer of “capitalism” came from the Karl Marx of Communism, and St John Paul II in Centesimus Annus clearly dislikes the term, preferentially substituting instead, and seeing the great worth of, the “modern business economy” and the functioning of the “free market”, as well as the “market economy or simply free economy.” (#42).

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has, after all, shown the way: “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations…Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (Caritas et Veritate, Benedict XVI, 2009, #36).

So yes, people, are greedy and selfish and that is precisely why society is beset by so many problems, and the bureaucracy of the State is no solution, only the practice of free enterprise by those possessing the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance will help society.

That’s why we have laws to seek and punish those who steal, cheat, swindle, and worse crimes. That’s why we have the Catholic Church to guide us – She who invented charity in the West. It’s time to face reality.

A fallacy was widely spread by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and still believed by many today. It is obviously wrong, because the fact is that free enterprise arose in Europe centuries before the Protestant Revolt. Free enterprise developed first only in Europe – the first example of free enterprise arose in the great Catholic monasteries.

The Catholic “ethic” is the reason Europeans excelled at metallurgy, shipbuilding, and farming. Weber’s thesis is based on what he considers “self-evidence” without any proof and seems to have been based on the smug anti-Catholicism of his time and place, only citing Martin Offenbacher’s “findings” now exposed as incorrect by George Becker , 2000,1997.(Cf. The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, , p 239, 254).

 

[BettyBoop416]

[T]he Pastor of my parish hasn’t announced that everyone has to forfeit half his paycheck.

According to last week’s bulletin, that bomb will be dropped this coming Sunday.

 

[pristine2]

It’s not so much that the Pope is a Marxist as Marx followed Christian principles and tried to correct a very evil form of laissez faire capitalism. He just went overboard when he suggested that the ends justify the means. /QUOTE]

This isn’t really true. There may be some underlying values and notions of justice in Marxism that have roots in Christianity, but Marxism is explicitly hostile to religion and Christianity in particular.

The reason Marx had such influence is that he was a very formulaic thinker, in an era when formulas had tremendous intellectual appeal. He offered a model by which the entire human experience could be reduced to an essentially binary interaction between socio-economic classes and their relationship to capital.

He wrote persuasively on alienation, describing how the worker had become a mere “appendage of flesh on the machine”. But his mechanistic, utilitarian view of humanity led to the ultimate alienation, by which the individual was nothing more than a cog in a grand economic device, shaded good or evil solely by virtue of his perceived economic class, and his perceived relation to the cause of “socialism”. Lenin’s writings (influenced as they were by a industrial management analyst named Winslow Taylor) took this view to its logical extreme, and communism became a prescription for genocide.

Marx also developed a seminal and very useful definition of capital, which is still largely accepted across all reaches of the political spectrum, though many on the right would deny this.

 

[Abu]

Karl Marx, the founder of communism, invented the use of the word “capitalism” to mean a despised exploitation of “workers”, because he wanted to gain power and control everything including the “workers”. It is Karl Marx who coined the term “capitalism” as a pejorative term to condemn wealth and foment class warfare. The capacity to motivate work and the reinvestment of profits constitute the driving force for the productivity of free enterprise. So against the confused and misled, it is wise to examine Christ’s teaching on using our talents, and on wealth

He predicted the demise of “capitalism” in his “law” of the diminishing returns on capital!

So as St John Paul II indicates capitalism” is not really a worthy term. This is especially true as it is a Marxist versus a really Catholic perception of free enterprise developed through the monks and the great Catholic Late Scholastics.
St John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, 1991, #42: “If by ‘capitalism’ is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a ‘business economy,’ ‘market economy’ or simply ‘free economy.’ ” {Post #19].

 

[Cosmic_Zamboni]

St. John Paul II was quite a communicator. His terms are indeed superior to “capitalism”.

 

[lynnvinc]

lynnvinc;12060246:

It’s not so much that the Pope is a Marxist as Marx followed Christian principles and tried to correct a very evil form of laissez faire capitalism. He just went overboard when he suggested that the ends justify the means.

This isn’t really true. There may be some underlying values and notions of justice in Marxism that have roots in Christianity, but Marxism is explicitly hostile to religion and Christianity in particular.

The reason Marx had such influence is that he was a very formulaic thinker, in an era when formulas had tremendous intellectual appeal. He offered a model by which the entire human experience could be reduced to an essentially binary interaction between socio-economic classes and their relationship to capital.

He wrote persuasively on alienation, describing how the worker had become a mere “appendage of flesh on the machine”. But his mechanistic, utilitarian view of humanity led to the ultimate alienation, by which the individual was nothing more than a cog in a grand economic device, shaded good or evil solely by virtue of his perceived economic class, and his perceived relation to the cause of “socialism”. Lenin’s writings (influenced as they were by a industrial management analyst named Winslow Taylor) took this view to its logical extreme, and communism became a prescription for genocide.

Marx also developed a seminal and very useful definition of capital, which is still largely accepted across all reaches of the political spectrum, though many on the right would deny this.

That’s an excellent analysis & I totally agree. My own social science meta-framework is Parsonian, multidimensional in which no single dimension (social, cultural, psychological, biological, environmental) is sole determinant of the human condition, but all have interpenetrating impact – altho unlike Parsons I include conflict within and among the dimensions. In this view Marxism would be considered social (specifically economic) determinism, and as you say, very simplistic, sort of like Levi-Straussian structuralism.

However, as you also pointed out Marx had some good insights, e.g., his ideas about alienation. I think he was also influenced by Christianity (his father converted to Lutheranism), which would help account for his concern for the exploited, but probably was demoralized by how so many people calling themselves Christian could use and abuse their religion to use and abuse others, and he then probably came to the conclusion that it wasn’t their religion but their economic/social position that was the determinant, with religion tailing along as an ideological tool.

In this day and age, when so many are cultural (specifically religious) determinists – blaming 9/11 on Islam, and various ills on Christianity, etc., – it might help if they consider some of the good points Marx raises, without going bonkers overboard into Marxism.

Since we did not have modern industrial capitalism during the time of Jesus, it might be difficult to figure out what Jesus would say about it today; however, I think Pope Francis does a good job in addressing it in a genuinely Christian way.

Some here have argued that Christianity is about freedom, and capitalism is a freedom-granting economic system. I don’t think it is totally so in practice, we are pretty much controlled by the economic powers that be, who also influence if not outright control governments – one might speak of the industrial-military-government-media-education-church complex (I have some stories about corporate reach into local parishes). Just because large-scale industrial communism turned out to be really bad and evil (unlike communal sharing as practiced in a monastery or a band-level society), it doesn’t mean we should forgo criticism of modern global industrial capitalism. There’s no law that says if you criticize one you have to praise the other – both are seriously flawed.

I meant in my earlier post by us relatively rich people harming others that it is not just a matter of taking away their traditional subsistence abilities and making them poorer, or keeping them in poverty by not allowing them to come up (afterall, Jesus was poor, as are those who take vows of poverty), but the various air, water, soil pollution harms that mostly affect the poor, and the concomitant conflicts indirectly or directly caused by monied interests, with the rich disproportionately being the beneficiaries, and the poor being disproportionately the losers and physically harmed. That’s an area of which I am familiar, and there are plenty of examples from around that world to say these are not anomalous situations of system breakdown here and there, but are a pattern and seem to be part of the system.

 

[Cosmic_Zamboni]

“Modern industrial capitalism” as you call it should certainly be subject to criticism. I just should not be mischaracterized. Pope Francis conveys more (or less?) than intellectual criticism in his choice of language.

 

[lynnvinc]

“Modern industrial capitalism” as you call it should certainly be subject to criticism. I just should not be mischaracterized. Pope Francis conveys more (or less?) than intellectual criticism in his choice of language.

I’ve given it some thought re differences (which are very minor, more in style) among the last 2 popes. It occurred to me that the reason JPII seems a bit more critical of communism and capitalism-friendly is because of his experiences under communism in Poland. BXVI and Francis, OTOH, have lived in societies that either had negative experiences with capitalism or had a more socialistic & communal (than American) cultural ideal. I’m not a scholar of papal writings – this is just my impression.

We also have to understand that a lot of “free” enterprise over the past 3+ centuries has rested somewhat on colonialism, cheating the natives out of their lands/resources, and slavery (and I think there are more slaves today than ever in the past). In other words, our global economic system (whether we call it capitalism or free enterprise) is more “free” for the rich and well-off who have the power or gov backing to protect them from “free enterprise” marauders. This is not to imply that communism is the answer – tho it was a failed attempt to correct the evils of capitalism – only that we need to constantly strive to bring in Christian principles into our economic dealings, and face the reality that there are plenty of people around the globe who get the very short end of the economic stick. If by their own short-comings and handicaps, then we as Christians we need to care and share; but if by way of helping us live more richly, then we need to correct the injustices. This is an ongoing and serious project that is not served by people saying free enterprise won, let the chips fall where they may, refusing to see and correct the harms. We need to actively seek out the harms and strive to address them, rather than looking the other way. But all in a Christian (not militant) way.

At the very least we need to help those harmed who will never get any this-world justice to overcome their anger, hatred, desolation, and despair and perhaps become peaceful Christian activists in bringing about justice for others. Give hope.

 

[Abu]

lynnvinc #126
This is not to imply that communism is the answer – tho it was a failed attempt to correct the evils of capitalism – only that we need to constantly strive to bring in Christian principles into our economic dealings, and face the reality that there are plenty of people around the globe who get the very short end of the economic stick.

The error lies in not appreciating the essential greatness of free enterprise – the evils lie with people NOT with what brought so many out of poverty because of the Catholic system starting with the monks and developed by the great Late Scholastics.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has, after all, shown the way: “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations…Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (Caritas et Veritate, Benedict XVI, 2009, #36).

 

[lynnvinc]

The error lies in not appreciating the essential greatness of free enterprise – the evils lie with people NOT with what brought so many out of poverty because of the Catholic system starting with the monks and developed by the great Late Scholastics.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has, after all, shown the way: “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations…Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (Caritas et Veritate, Benedict XVI, 2009, #36).

No problem with that, except that we are also free to create laws and regulations that protect people from negative externalities and harms caused by other individuals in their capacities as corporate CEOs, waste haulers, etc.

In fact we should not even allow corporations to have status as persons (with the rights and protections that human being persons have). We should be able to go after the persons and assets within the corps and from the individuals that run the corps when they and their pollution, etc, have greatly harmed others. I’ve heard of cases in which corps dissolve, hide their assets, and reincarnate later, just to avoid paying for damages they have caused – people die, corporations can reincarnate or morph into some other form.

We need to strip corps of their “personhood” here in the U.S. That would be a step in the right direction, bec as you say, it is people/individuals that are accountable. Then get rid of all the protections corps have, such as WTO, etc. If they want freedom, then they should not get such extra-national power and protections (I’m beginning to sound partly like a libertarian). Considering that some harms extend far into the future, corps should be required to set aside funds for those future harms.

If corps were to pay for all the harms they do and individuals in corps were also liable (with “preponderance of evidence” r/t “beyond a reasonable doubt” as the standard in attributing harms in civil cases), there would be very little profits and we consumers would be paying closer to the real price for products. The individuals inside the corps might even decide to look for more benign alternatives rather than run such financial and criminal-charge risks.

The reason the system looks so rosy is that those who are looking at it are not suffering the brunt of the harms (or are unaware they are), the corps are not internalizing externalities, and the middle class and rich are able to pay artificially low prices for products and get artificially higher wages…at the expense of other people’s suffering.