Socialism and Catholicism

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As long as Turkey continues to be a major ally of the US, I don’t see any country such as Kurdistan for the Kurds. The Sykes Picot agreement was unfair to the Kurds and that is how it is.
 
The Catholic Worker was a mixture of anarchism and distributism. What they meant by anarchism was sometimes confusing as it didn’t sound like orthodox anarchism. Read Peter Maurin’s Easy Essays and you’ll see him criticize socialism.
 
Our parish priest worked with Dorothy Day in the US as a young Irish priest and this experience helped him immensely.
Will she be a canonized socialist saint?
 
It’s not just opinion. Socialism, defined as the nationalization of all private property by the state, has been condemned by the Church numerous times. Private property has been defended.
 
No the Pope is not a socialist. He is not calling for the nationalization of all private property.
 
StudentMI said:
Socialism, defined as the nationalization of all private property by the state
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What if you nationalize healthcare, big business, auto manufacturing, airplane transport, railway transport, bus transport, electricity, gas and water, internet, oil industry, but allow small private businesses of up to 15 people working for you and you allow each person or family to have two houses at most.
 
I would argue that is a state that far surpassed what is just as far as subsidiarity goes. It would also be economically inefficient.

I would suggest, however, that the industries you listed already are socialist in a way. Don’t they rely on state support in one form or another to continue their monopoly?
 
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StudentMI said:
Don’t they rely on state support in one form or another to continue their monopoly?
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Yes they do.
However, you said that socialism was when ALL private property was nationalized by the state. Do you want to change that?
 
Why would I want to change it when that is exactly what socialism is? However one can also talk degrees. Noam Chomsky has said our system is “socialism for the rich, market discipline for the poor.” I doubt he would call our system socialist, however. I would call it state capitalist.

Interestingly there was a writer named Frank Chodorov who argued there were only two systems possible when it came to economics: capitalism or state capitalism. He called even the socialism of the Soviet Union state capitalism and explained why. Interesting viewpoint.
 
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NoelFitz said:
Harry,
does the state have the right to defend itself from invasion?
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That is a rather peculiar way of putting it, no?

The state has a responsibility to defend the life and dignity of each individual citizen as distinctly human moral agents, which is essentially the same as its responsibility that I outlined…
HarryStotle said:
The only role for the state is to ensure that economic exchanges are just and that respect for the dignity of each individual as a distinctly human moral agent is maintained.
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Whether that threat to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is internal or external to national boundaries is irrelevant to where the state’s responsibility lies.

The reason I say your’s is a “rather peculiar way of putting it” is because you are creating a virtually autonomous entity independent of “the people” by claiming the state has a “right” to defend ITSELF from invasion.
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The state is not an entity over and above the people.
 
I said in a way. I also said one can speak of degrees. What is your point?
 
MNathaniel said:
Either way, in the spirit of trying to be helpful, I just thought I’d mention that the idea of “democratic socialism” being different from “socialism” really is just unfortunate propaganda that socialists
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Your distinction between “socialism” as ‘state ownership of the means of production’ (in a system without any private property or enterprise) and “capitalism” as ‘private ownership of the means of production’ (in which private individuals and companies own capital goods) is much too crude and binary, in my honest opinion.

It obscures the historical process by which we arrived at the ideological compromise underpinning ‘social market’ economics and ‘social democracy’ (with generously public funded welfare states, multi-level collective bargaining, a large unionised workforce etc.).

For the men and women who pioneered this socioeconomic order in postwar Europe, from the 1950s onwards (many of them Christian Democrats inspired by Catholic Social Teaching, which was the official political philosophy of the CDU in Germany), they were adamant about the fact that they were charting a middle path inspired by elements of both models but rejecting the deficiencies of both as well, that retained a ‘market economy’ (and a very vibrant pro-free trade one at that) but with strong socialised elements and state intervention to level the playing field / provide social balance and counteract the excesses of capitalism.

In West Germany, for example, the ‘Christian Democratic Union’ (Angela Merkel’s party today) led by the devout Catholic Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, came up with the “Ahlen Program” of social market economics which was adopted in February 1947.

It explicitly called for a “socialist economic order”:

https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3093
The capitalist economic system has served neither the state’s nor the German people’s vital interests…

The content and goal of this new social and economic order can no longer be the capitalistic pursuit of power and profit; it must lie in the welfare of our people. A socialist economic order must provide the German people with an economic and social framework that accords with the rights and dignity of the individual, serves the intellectual and material development of our nation, and secures peace both at home and abroad.

The economy must unlock the productive forces of both the individual and the community. The starting point of all economic activity is the recognition of the individual. Personal freedom in the economic sphere is closely related to freedom in the political sphere. Efforts to shape and guide the economy must not deprive individuals of their personal freedom."
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The German CDU’s “Ahlen Program,” for instance, also states that:
“Legally acquired property that is not used in a politically abusive manner must be respected within the framework of general laws” (ibid., 4), later further clarifying that: “In industry, commerce and skilled trades, private entrepreneurship must be preserved and further promoted” (ibid.).
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(continued…)
 
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This is how postwar European economies achieved a ‘via media’. The Labour Party in the UK, which founded the NHS, was the same from 1945 - 1951. In its party constitution, the British Labour Party of the 1930s clearly stated in clause IV:
"To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service"
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The Catholic hierarchy in Britain had approved of British Socialism as an acceptable stance for Catholics to vote for:
The Catholic hierarchy in England upheld the view that Pope Pius XI’s condemnation of socialism did not apply to the British form of socialism and that Catholics were free to vote for the Labour party
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This judgement of the English bishops was confirmed, at the time in the 1930s, by the Vatican which issued the following clarification in L’Osservatore Romano :
“ Socialists who do not profess atheistic materialism and do not fight against religion, freedom and public morality, as for example the English Socialist party of Laborites, are not condemned by the Church ”

( Vatican, L’Osservatore Della Domenica, May 24th 1931 )
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The onus is upon you here, to explain to me why the English bishops and Vatican did not object to British Labour even though it ran on a mandate which included clause IV? No mention of it in the above, only ‘atheistic materialism’ and ‘fighting against religion’, which UK Labour didn’t have because it was a religious-positive socialism partly inspired by left-wing Christian Methodism.

This is why Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has stated:

firstthings.com/article/2006/01/europe-and-its-discontents
EUROPE AND ITS DISCONTENTS
by Pope Benedict XVI
January 2006
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But in Europe, in the nineteenth century, the two models were joined by a third, socialism, which quickly split into two different branches, one totalitarian and the other democratic. Democratic socialism managed to fit within the two existing models as a welcome counterweight. It also managed to appeal to various denominations. In England it [Democratic Socialism] became the political party of the Catholics . In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness.
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The pope emeritus knew very well what he said here. He was speaking about the ‘Democratic socialism’ of then British Labour, not just ‘social democracy’. And he understood that it was the traditional political party of English Catholics and recognised its closeness ‘in many respects’ to Catholic social doctrine.
 
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