In my last column, I proposed that the teachings of Christ and His Church cannot be reconciled with the logic or reality of capitalism. Before developing that argument in future columns, however, I want to address another aspect of Catholic Social Teaching: its attitude toward socialism. Since Leo XIII, the Church has consistently taught that socialism, the most significant challenger to capitalism as an economic system, is entirely incompatible with human dignity and to the deepest truths of our existence.
First and most obviously, the more extreme advocates of socialism — most notably, Karl Marx — have proceeded from the false assumption that there is no God. Moreover, they pretend that Christianity is a delusion that at best only serves to take humanity’s eyes off of this-worldly suffering. Advocates of this position, however, simply assume humanity can comprehend reality through strictly naturalistic and rationalist means. As Christians, however, we know that there is more to reality than what submits itself to empirical observation or to the limited abilities of the human mind. We also see that Christianity does not call on us to ignore or wish away human suffering. On the contrary, properly practiced, Christianity demands our constant attention to the depths of human suffering and our imitation of divine, selfless love in every human encounter.
The more extreme forms of socialism also call for the abolition of private property, usually through revolutionary means. While Church teaching on private property is complicated, Leo XIII and his successors have emphasized that total attacks on private property defy the natural law, because human dignity and healthy families require the legal recognition and protection of private property. Indeed, Leo XIII, sounding almost like a Jeffersonian, made clear that the real freedom of the working classes comes from their ability to purchase their own productive land, with which they would then be able to produce their own means of survival.
Relatedly, socialism often presents a flattened view of history as a simple story of class conflict between oppressing and oppressed classes, a conflict that will only end with the revolutionary elimination of all class differences. In contrast, the Church teaches that, given differences in human aptitudes and interests, at least some — but by no means all — class distinctions are proper and beneficial to social life. Moreover, the principle of solidarity instructs us that the appropriate attitude toward social life is to see it as a common project among classes, rather than a zero-sum game between them. Any deviation from the principle of solidarity along class lines, then, betrays a foundational truth of Catholic Social Teaching: the common brotherhood of all humanity.
It’s also important to note that even more moderate forms of socialism — those that reject revolution, class warfare and the abolition of private property — nevertheless proceed from the assumption that the efficiencies of collective production trump the goods derived from leaving individuals alone to produce for themselves. As Pope Pius XI made clear in his great contribution to the Church’s social teaching, imposing collective production on all would necessarily require a level of coercion that defies human dignity. Pius acknowledged the socialists’ justification for collective production: the significant increase in material goods that such production would yield. Pius XI, however, also stressed that this wouldn’t be a fair trade: even assuming that socialized production would increase the level of material goods, that increase would not outweigh the loss of higher human goods that individual production provides, goods like agency and dignity.
Indeed, it’s here that we begin to see why most forms of statism, whether socialist or fascist, must be rejected: They envision an even broader social and economic project that aims to place all aspects of social life — family, education, work, religion and entertainment, to name a few — at the service of the social whole. Ultimately, under these systems no aspect of life would be free from the state’s control, and no person would be free to develop the agency and self-respect that all children of God deserve.
In contrast to this vision, as expressed through the principle of subsidiarity, the Church recognizes and defends the great value and service that civil society offers to human flourishing. The various groups that comprise social life — families, churches, businesses, charitable organizations, unions and trade associations, among others — all work to varying degrees to provide their members with the means of becoming fully-functioning, creative and productive adults who can contribute to the well-being of themselves, their families and the whole of the community.
Accordingly, since Leo XIII, the Church has taught that, so long as they direct themselves toward just and lawful ends, these social groups — what the 19th-century sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville referred to as “little platoons” — must be protected from the invasive control of the state. This prohibition even stands when the state seeks to put its power to seemingly humanitarian ends. Otherwise, we run the risk of the government becoming, as Tocqueville again put it, a kind of perverse parent that will rob its “children” of the agency and will to behave as true adults. Citizens will become little more than house pets, with the level of comfort they enjoy determined by which kind of statist regime — communist, social democratic or fascist — into which they are born.
Where does this leave us as Catholics? Given that socialism is such a clear rejection of divine truth and the human good and, if I am correct, capitalism is also inconsistent with human flourishing, what options are available to us? That question, too, will provide material for future columns. For now, I will simply note that in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, St. Pope John Paul II identified a third alternative, which he called a free economy and which he sharply distinguished from capitalism. Quite simply, we need to remind ourselves that there are possibilities beyond capitalism and socialism, possibilities that would not only transcend the materialism, alienation and demoralization of socialism and capitalism but that would also bring us into greater solidarity with each other, offer us more agency and develop a social life much more consistent with true Christian witness. As Catholics, this is the kind of social life we’re called upon to build.