The Great Lie: Pope Benedict XVI On Socialism

by Rev. Robert Sirico

1/08/08

Display Full Article/Printer Friendly | Send to a Friend   One doesn't usually expect a thorough-going reconstruction of the history of socialism in the late 19th century from the pope, but Benedict XVI has delivered to us a wonderful -- and oh-so-needed -- reminder of what socialism was (and is), and why it went wrong. One can't but marvel at his intellectual power: He has discerned the essential problem that has evaded vast numbers of academics for 100 years.   What's more, he has done this in a time when socialism as an ideology seems to have been unfazed by the collapse of the communist experiment. Visit the philosophy and English departments on most college campuses, and you will still find intellectuals waxing eloquent on the glories of socialist theory. Students are still encouraged to imagine that it could work.   What about the Soviet Union? We are told that this wasn't really socialism. And what about Nazism -- the German word for national socialism? Oh, that's not socialism either. What about the growing impoverishment in once-rich countries with social democratic governments? The failure of micro-socialism in the United States, where entire communities have lived on government subsidies and are plagued with frightening levels of social pathology? They say that this is not socialism either.   Large swaths of American academia are in denial. So too are major parts of the American and European clerical class, which is still under the impression that socialism represents a gospel ideal that has yet to be tried. One suspects that the entire history of the 20th century passed them by, for they have learned nothing from the poverty, despotism, and vast suffering wrought by the socialist ideology.   Not Benedict. He wants to talk about it. It fits his message of hope precisely. Are we to discover our hope in salvation from God or from some material transformation?   The passages occur in his great new encyclical Spe Salvi ("in hope we are saved"). He addresses this core Christian virtue and explains what hope is and what it is not, what salvation is and is not.   History is strewn with intellectuals who imagined that they could save the world -- and created hell on earth as a result. The pope counts the socialists among them, and Karl Marx in particular. Here was an intellectual who imagined that salvation could occur without God, and that something approximating the Kingdom of God on earth could be created by adjusting the material conditions of man.   History, in Marx's view, was nothing but the crashes and grinding of these material forces. There was no such thing as a fixed human nature. There was certainly no God who is the author of history. There are no permanent themes that follow along moral lines. Rather, we are all merely pushed around by large and impersonal forces. But it is possible to wrest these forces within our control, to our advantage, provided we take the right steps. And what are these steps, in Marx's view? The expropriated working classes must take back what is rightfully theirs from the exploiting capitalist classes. Call it mass thievery, if you like -- the point is to gain power over the production forces of society. This is where history is headed anyway, said Marx; we only need to give it a shove in the right direction to achieve the bliss of socialism. How will it work? Well, Marx never thought much about that. Why should he? The large and impersonal forces of history would hammer that out. It was only his job to describe the great events that lead to the revolutionary environment. What follows after is not really a matter of bourgeois science; we must simply accept on faith that somehow, somewhere, sometime, socialism will begin to work brilliantly. Prev - Next >> Page 1 2