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Thread ID: 12696 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2004-03-10
2004-03-10 18:21 | User Profile
[url=http://www.kuyper.org/main/publish/journal/article_52.html]Socialism Again![/url]
Recently I was sent a newspaper cutting from The Catholic Times for 9 November 2003. The article, by Robert Doyle, related how Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tegucigalpa in Honduras, Central America, who has apparently been tipped as a future Pope, has attacked capitalism as "savage" and called for a return to the principles of socialism. According to the report in The Catholic Times the Archbishop said "The historic achievements of the welfare state are being dismantled and, as a result, the differences between the rich and the poor are growing." The Archbishop said further that "whereas states won a protagonist role on the economic terrain in the twentieth century, today their power is decreasing more and more."
Now, I cannot comment on the size of the State in Honduras. But the Cardinal was speaking of the world situation and his talk addressed the issue of globalisation. It seems astonishing to me that anyone should make the claim that the modern State is decreasing. The situation in Europe is completely the reverse, with an ever growing European super-State that seeks to regulate and control just about every aspect of our lives and society. This European State is thoroughly socialist.
But what is more astonishing is that, given the track record of socialist States from Hitler?s Third Reich and Stalin?s Soviet regime, through to the tin-pot imitators of these oppressive States in the Third World, clergymen should see the socialist State as a liberator of the poor and defender of the oppressed. More than any other form of State power it has been socialist States (and remember that the Soviet regime never claimed to have realised the communist ideal of society, but rather a socialist State) that have oppressed the poor and tyrannised their peoples. The unlearned Cardinal stated, according to The Catholic Times report, that "a savage capitalism is returning which history has already judged harshly in the view of the conditions to which it subjected the proletariat in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."
This has increasingly been shown to be a biased and incorrect view of both capitalism and socialism. The Industrial Revolution did not worsen the conditions of the working classes; it improved them greatly. And socialism did not improve the conditions of the working classes; it created worse conditions and led to their harsher treatment. The implementation of socialist economics in Russia following the Revolution led to a decrease in standards of living for the masses.[1] As a result the peasants of Soviet Russia did not achieve the standard of living they had enjoyed under tsarist rule immediately prior to the Revolution until the early 1950s.[2] The masses who voted with their feet to leave the land on which they were starving and work in the factories during the Industrial Revolution did not do so because they were forced by State decree to do this. It was the result of progress in a free society. It contrasted starkly with the treatment meted out to the peasants and working classes in Soviet Russia and other socialist States. Everything that makes modern life in the West superior on the material level to the drudgery of poverty that countless masses have had to endure throughout history is the result of the economic organisation of society on the capitalist model operating in a free society underpinned by a Christian world-view. This was the context in which economic progress changed the fate of the peoples of the Western world.[3]
Yet Christians have become obsessed with socialism.[4] And judging from the report in The Catholic Times the Cardinal seems quite oblivious to socialism?s ugly and ungodly beginnings. The report states that Cardinal Rodriguez "went on to call the concept of globalisation a ?myth? that masked the exploitation of the poor and added that only a new solidarity based on the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity could save the world from ruin." Well, this kind of rhetoric has been heard many times before. It is the rhetoric of the French Revolution. Strange though, there?s no mention in the report of the Cardinal commenting on Robespierre?s reign of terror and Marx?s call for it to be repeated, nor of the many actual repeats of the terror that have followed revolutions based on these lofty ideals both in Europe and the Third World. What?s sauce for the goose is certainly not sauce for the gander in the Cardinal?s book. But there again, capitalism, and subsequently economic progress, was never popular in Roman Catholic cultures. The economic progress experienced by Protestant nations following the Reformation typically lagged behind in Catholic countries, where the Roman Catholic religion ensured that the "proletariat" (to use the Cardinal?s Marxist terminology) was kept in its place by superstition and ignorance. It is truly ironic, therefore, that Roman Catholics should bewail and point the finger so much at a form of economic organisation of society that was, in its origin if not now, part of a Christian world-view, Protestantism, that liberated the masses from the superstition and ignorance that had oppressed them for so long and gave them not only material progress and wealth hitherto undreamed of, but spiritual liberty from the tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church.
The irony does not end here however. The very values that the Cardinal is reported as championing, "liberty, equality, fraternity" were the shibboleth of a revolution that erupted largely as a violent reaction against that very oppression of the masses in which the Roman Catholic Church was so complicit. The Roman Catholic Church persecuted and murdered the Huguenot (i.e. Protestant) Church in France, and yet it was Protestantism that gave Britain a religious and ethical value system that enabled it to avoid such a revolution. Had the Huguenots survived and flourished in France, as Protestantism did in Britain, it is questionable whether there would have been a French Revolution of the type that actually did occur. It seems rather hypocritical for Roman Catholics to turn round now and accuse the capitalist form of economic organisation of being oppressive, especially in view of the fact that capitalism has been the source of virtually all the economic progress that has enabled modern societies to improve the material and social conditions of the masses, thereby alleviating oppressive poverty.
The French Revolution was a reaction against a system of Roman Catholic mediaevalism that had passed its sell-by date two hundred years previously but which had been used to oppress the masses, who were denied not only the economic progress experienced in the Protestant nations largely as a result of the Reformation, but also the spiritual and ethical guidance, i.e. a Protestant world-view, necessary to control the burgeoning economic aspirations of society in a humane way. The result was the ungodly social explosion we call the French Revolution, the principles of which have remained with us and continue to cause untold suffering for people the world over. (On the future of the UK under the political ideology of the Revolution see Bob Graham?s article on the European Union in this issue.)
While writing this editorial I received through the post for review a book on ethics by someone described as an "outstanding Catholic intellectual."[5] The blurb on the back stated that the author "took Christianity to be deeply subversive of capitalism since it [i.e. Christianity] declares as possible the (to us) improbable prospect that people might live together without war or domination or antagonism but by unity in love." The author comments on the Eighth Commandment: "You shall not steal. Certainly the most misunderstood of all the commandments. It has nothing to do with property and its so-called rights. What it refers to is stealing men. Taking away their freedom to enslave them. It is a curious irony that in the name of this commandment we have built up a whole theory of the sacredness of possessions, of objects, a theory that has led to the wholesale enslavement of men?the very thing the commandment in fact denounces."[6]
This is truly astonishing. One wonders whether this "outstanding Catholic intellectual" ever read a word of twentieth century history. Was it the ideology of capitalism that enslaved and slaughtered millions in the concentration camps of Hitler and Stalin? When and where has capitalism led to the wholesale enslavement of men? And since when has socialism ever accomplished the prospect of men living together without war and domination? Socialism is responsible for the worse atrocities of the twentieth century. Millions died in Hitler?s and Stalin?s pogroms and persecutions, and the record of their disciples in the Third World is equally bad. Least of all do socialists have any right to speak of their beliefs ending war and oppression. Socialism, whether it has been the national socialism of Hitler or the international socialism of Stalin, has been responsible for the worst wars and campaigns of oppression, enslavement and mass murder the world has ever seen. Yet here we are again with so-called Christians and clergymen promoting socialism as a Christian ideal. What planet are these people living on?
The ideology behind Hitler?s Third Reich and Stalin?s Soviet Russia was not capitalism, it was socialism?red in tooth and claw. Can someone tell me, please, which mass murdering political regimes of the twentieth century (or any other century for that matter) were motivated by the ideology of capitalism? The Christian concept of intellectual honesty and integrity, indeed the very concept of truth, seems to be entirely foreign to the prophets of socialism, "Christian" or otherwise. And we should not expect anything else. Truth has always been the first victim of socialist propaganda and socialist politics. Socialist utopias have always been pursued by means of lies, deceit, persecution, oppression, the enslavement of the people and mass murder. Are we to expect anything else from people who believe God?s law can be set aside so easily? If the Eighth Commandment can be set aside so easily by socialists it should not surprise us that the others, including the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," can be cast aside as well. But what are we to make of "Christians" who say that the Eighth Commandment "has nothing to do with property and its so-called rights"?
This obsession with socialism by Christians is not confined to the Roman Catholic Church however. In the twentieth century Protestants too became enamoured of socialist ideology?at least in Britain and Europe. This can be seen at many levels, both officially and unofficially. For example, the previous Anglican Archbishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard, argued in his book Bias to the Poor that justice should be biased to the poor.[7] Yet Scripture specifically forbids those whose office it is to administer justice from exercising such a bias (Ex. 23:3; Lev. 19:15). Sheppard acknowledged that such a bias involves more than the biblical injunction that the wealthy in society should help those who are genuinely poor by exercising charity. He says "The call for justice jars on many ears. To those who broadly believed the status quo to be a just one it seems more wounding than a demand for charity or welfare . . . But I want to press the points about justice and about more equal opportunities for all to make real choices about their destiny. That will mean the shift of powers and resources."[8] But any shift of resources?i.e. redistribution of wealth from one class to another in society?that is not the result of voluntary decisions on the part of those from whom the resources are redistributed, e.g. through trade or charity, in other words any shift of resources that is achieved by force, is called theft in the Bible, even when such force is exercised by the State (cf. Lev. 25:23, Num. 36:7, and Ezek. 46:18 with 1 Kings 21:1?19). Such theft is not excused by the needs of the thief (Pr. 6:30?31); though neither does this fact relieve the wealthy of their responsibility to help the poor (Pr. 22:9; Lk. 14:13?14 ).
Another, and rather extreme, example of this attitude was the case of the Anglican priest who claimed that shoplifting from large superstores is not theft and that such activity helps to effect a badly needed redistribution of economic resources in society.[9] The Times reported the priest as stating that superstores are "places of evil and temptation." This would not have been the first time a clergyman decided that the way to deal with temptation is to give in to it, but the reasons given by this clergyman for his views on shoplifting were more ideological, involving a religious perspective that is socialist, not Christian. The Bible forbids theft (Ex. 20:15) and requires a thief to make restitution to his victim plus compensation of between a fifth and five times the values of the goods stolen, depending on the nature of the theft (Ex. 22:1, 4; Lev. 6:2?5; Num. 5:6?8). I remember myself being sternly warned by an Anglican priest that the Bible does not support the concept of private property. My offer to rifle through the pockets of his coat on the way out met with an equally stern and humourless countenance.
This is typical of socialists. It is only other people?s property that is not protected by the Eighth Commandment. And this really is the point. If socialism is a biblical ideal what on earth is the Eighth Commandment for? Of course, it is true that the Bible teaches that all wealth is a gift of God and that we are only the stewards of what we own. It is our duty to use the wealth that God has given us stewardship over in a way that conforms to his standards, and this includes the showing of mercy and charity to those in need. But this is just the point. God has made me the steward of the resources he has put at my disposal, not someone else, and certainly not the State. For someone else to usurp my responsibility under God to exercise stewardship over the resources he has given me is a crime not only against me, but against God himself because it is a transgression of his law and a denial of the social order that he has established for mankind in his word. This is no less the case when the State usurps my God-given responsibility. It is this point that "Christian" socialists seem to miss altogether. Their idolatry of State power blinds them to the obvious. God has not granted the State stewardship over society?s economic resources. The State has a legitimate but limited social function as a ministry of public justice, and it is authorised by Scripture to collect taxes in order to enable it to fulfil this specific function, and this alone (Rom. 13:1?6). It is not authorised by Scripture to collect taxes for any other purpose.[10]
Furthermore, socialism has always shown itself hostile to Christian values. What socialist government has ever upheld the rights of God, defended institutions like the Christian family, preserved Christian ethics in medicine and sexuality, passed legislation that enables a man to leave an inheritance for his children (Pr. 13:22) rather than confiscating his children?s inheritance? Socialist governments have been inimical to all these values from the beginning. Least of all do socialist governments uphold righteousness. Socialism is an engine of social revolution that seeks to overturn everything that Christianity values. True, many socialist politicians claim to be Christian. But Christ taught us that it is by the fruit that they bear?i.e. by their works?that we shall know who are his, not by their mere profession (Mt. 7:16). Politicians who proclaim themselves Christians yet who stand against Christian values and deny the ethics of God?s word should not to be accepted as believers. Rather they should be seen for what they are, social revolutionaries who are in rebellion against God and his kingdom.
Of course it would be absurd to argue that free market capitalism is the answer to man?s problems, that poverty itself can be eradicated completely by adopting the capitalist form of economic organisation. But this does not mean that society should not adopt a capitalist form of economic organisation, merely that its adoption, per se, would not solve all the problems of poverty. The fact that capitalism does not solve the problem of poverty does not mean capitalism is "savage" any more than the fact that socialism has not solved the problem of poverty means it is sinful?though of course socialism is morally unacceptable for other reasons. The issue of poverty is much more complex than that. The free market is not a theory of everything, and to treat it as such is to reduce the whole of life to the economic aspect, to seek the meaning of life in the created order itself, and thus a form of idolatry, and this is the problem with the Godless libertarianism that has flourished in recent years. But the choice is not between capitalism as a theory of everything and capitalism as the source of man?s problems. Capitalism relates to one aspect of life, the economic, and therefore finds its proper function and purpose alongside other forms of human activity, all of which find their ultimate meaning in God?s creative purpose for mankind. Free market capitalism, therefore, is a valid and correct way of organising society economically, but it can only find its proper place when due consideration is given to the other functions of man?s life and when it is not used to define human life in its totality. Historically modern capitalism arose in societies where economics was not the defining feature of life, where it was only one aspect of human activity and where a Christian world-view provided ultimate meaning and purpose for society as a whole. If free market economics have been divorced from this social context in the modern world, thereby distorting the true meaning of man?s life, this does not mean that the capitalist form of economic organisation is evil per se, merely that sinful men have idolised it. We must resist all such idolatry. But we must not throw out the baby with the bath water. The capitalistic organisation of economic activity is the correct approach to one aspect of human life, and therefore part of the answer to man?s needs, but it can only function effectively and properly as part of the whole that God intends human society to be when it finds its context in relation to the other functions of human life as God has ordered it by his word. Capitalism, therefore, is not in principle evil, even if it can be perverted for evil ends by sinful men, as is often the case.
Socialism, by contrast, is evil in principle because it is predicated on the rejection of God?s order for man?s life, even if it is adopted as an ideal by men with good intentions. It is really a religion, not merely a form of economic organisation, because it functions as an all-embracing world-view. Socialism reduces life to the economic aspect and is therefore idolatrous in principle. Mammon is then the answer to man?s problems. This fact can be seen in the way socialist governments seek to solve virtually every kind of social problem. If only more money were available, if only there were more economic equality, we could solve all our problems. But money does not solve man?s problems. There are more funds available to the State now than at any other period of our history (due to the success, ironically, of capitalist enterprise), and we have more economic equality than at any other time in our history (due again to the success of capitalistic enterprise), but this has not solved our problems. Socialism has palpably failed to deliver the goods it has promised; indeed it has failed even to deliver the narrow economic benefits it promised to the masses. The extent to which modern Western society has these economic advantages is due entirely to the success of capitalism, not socialism.
Requiring the State to fulfil our responsibilities for us has not solved society?s problems. Far from solving our problems the socialist State has exacerbated them. For example, the modern State, which seeks to control so much of our lives, is one of the worst vandals history has known. It squanders vast millions on useless and destructive projects that contribute nothing to the betterment of human society and culture, quite apart from the millions spent on unnecessary wars. Nor is this the case only with the tin-pot socialist dictatorships that seem to be endemic in the Third World and that only seem to reduce their societies to greater poverty. Western States are equally guilty of waste and vandalism at all levels, whether it is spending millions of taxpayers? money on computer systems that do not work or giving grants to students to enable them to engage in idiotic performance art. I am thinking here of an arts grant given to some students in Leeds a number a years ago for a performance art project in which two hard hats were yoked together on the top by a short plank of wood. The performance of the art, for which the art grant was awarded, consisted of two students walking around the streets of Leeds wearing these hard hats yoked by the plank of wood. A local TV news programme carried the story.
Well of course, art is a necessary element of human life. (For more on art as a necessary aspect of human life see Dimitri Tsouris? article on "Ethics in Art Practice" in this issue.) In the most desperate of conditions men have shown themselves to be artists. Art is vital to culture. I do not doubt this. But does the taxpayer really have to fund the bill for this kind of thing? Where art is not funded by the State this is unlikely to happen. Stupidity is not art. Where people are allowed to retain responsibility for the stewardship of the resources that God has given them they can choose not to subsidise stupidity and they can subsidise excellence instead. The socialist State, ever ready to regulate society in accordance with the wishes of those lobbying groups who can gain the ear of politicians and promise votes at elections, has been a poor and wasteful sponsor of the arts, and consequently has engaged in cultural as well as economic and military vandalism. The modern State is anything but responsible in its attitude to taxpayers? money. Its record as a steward of society?s resources is one of the worst.
The Bible gives stewardship of the economic resources of society to the family and the individual, not to the State. To insist that the State usurp the role of the family and abridge the liberty of the individual by calling for the socialist organisation of society is rebellion against God.
It is, of course, our duty as individuals, as families, as communities and particularly as the Christian community of faith, the Church, to help the needy and to care for the genuine poor. But it is not the duty of the State to usurp our responsibility to do this by providing welfare that is funded by taxation, which confiscates the very funds necessary for individuals, families and Churches to fulfil their God-ordained responsibility to care for the needy and help the poor. The State has no authority, no mandate in God?s word, to take these responsibilities away from us. When it does so it distorts the humane social order that God has ordained in Scripture and creates in its place a dysfunctional society because the other institutions responsible for these things (family and Church) are not able to function according to their divinely-ordained roles?and neither does the State itself function according to its God-ordained role in these circumstances. As a result, justice itself, which it is the proper function of the State to uphold, is compromised.[11] Neither does the usurpation of the roles of these other institutions by the State create a caring society, as socialist propaganda would have us believe. Rather, it creates an un-caring society, a society in which individuals, families and communities?and alas even the Church?abdicate their responsibilities to the anonymous State. The State is then expected to shoulder all of man?s social responsibilities, a role for which it was never intended and which it is not competent to fulfil. The result of the State?s attempts to fulfil this expectation is the near total control and regulation of life by the State?i.e. totalitarianism, the abolition of freedom. And this is the moral that socialists have never understood: if men will not shoulder their responsibilities they will inevitably lose their freedom. This is a lesson that has been demonstrated time and again in those countries that have embraced socialism. It will be no different in the UK, since our freedom has already been abolished in principle and replaced by the fraudulent secular humanist ideal know as "human rights."
Furthermore, there are insufficient funds available to enable the State to fulfil the role that socialists conceive for it. How is this problem to be solved? The answer of just about every socialist I have ever known is that his neighbour does not pay enough taxes and should be taxed more. But not our socialist comrade. Of course, he pays his fair share already, if not too much. It would be unreasonable to expect him to pay more taxes. ("Christian" socialists should here take note of the biblical commandment to love one?s neighbour as oneself.) I have yet to see a wealthy socialist calling for more taxes?and there are plenty of them doing this, particularly in the world of entertainment and the media?who is willing to donate some of his wealth to the State (which is not the same thing as donating it to charity, and socialism requires the State to provide for man?s welfare, not charity).[12]
In the perspective of the socialist, you see, private property is wrong, except for the private property in his pocket. Socialism is the politics of envy, and as even our unlearned, tipped-to-be-Pope Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez knows, envy is sin. As another religion, an alternative to Christianity, which is what it is,?and therefore an idolatrous philosophy of life?socialism rejects God?s word in principle. It is no wonder then that the fruit produced by the tree of socialism in the twentieth century, the century of socialism, was so inimical to Christian values at all levels?e.g. health care (witness abortion and euthanasia); sexual ethics (witness the permissive society and homosexual liberation); education (witness indoctrination of the secular humanist religion in the State education system and the abolition of Clause 28); law (witness the overturning of justice due to the victims of crime and the indulgence with which criminals are treated); economics (witness legalised theft on a grand scale by the State); the family (witness the welfare State in combination with permissive legislation on divorce, which has virtually destroyed the Christian conception of family life). Where, and in what principles, policies or practices does socialism conform to Christian ideals? Nowhere!
Socialism is a world-view, a religion, diametrically opposed to the Christian religion in its view of God, its code of ethics and its teaching on social and political order. Christians must see the socialist agenda for what it is, revolution against God?s will for man?s life. The Church is called to speak the prophetic word of God to society and call the people back to obedience to God?s law. If she is to do this faithfully she must resolutely stand against socialism in all its forms. C&S
NOTES
Wilhelm Röpke, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market (London: Oswald Wolff [Publishers] Ltd, 1960), p. 150f., P. T. Bauer, Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in the Economics of Development (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984), p. 187f.; Carol Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), pp. 386?405.
G. North, An Introduction to Christian Economics (The Craig Press, 1973), p. 81. North cites as his source Janet Chapman, Real Wages in Soviet Russia Since 1928 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 150.
For more on this see Stephen C. Perks, The Political Economy of A Christian Society (Taunton: The Kuyper Foundation, 2001). See also Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: George Allen and Unwin, [1930] 1985).
The exception to this seems to be Christians in the USA, who are far more aware of the deficiencies and non-Christian nature of socialist ideology.
Herbert McCabe, Law, Love and Language (London: Continuum, [1968] 2003).
Ibid., p. 122, my emphasis.
David Sheppard, Bias to the Poor (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983).
Ibid., p. 15.
Michael Horsnell, "Priest advocates shoplifting from ?evil? superstores" in The Times, Saturday 15, 1997, p. 3.
For more on this and the exegesis of Rom. 13:1?6 see Stephen C. Perks, A Defence of the Christian State (Taunton: The Kuyper Foundation, 1998), Appendix A and passim. See also Stephen C. Perks, "A Christian View of the State (Civil Government)" in Christianity & Society, Vol. xii, No. 4 (Oct. 2002), pp. 18?24.
On the compromising of the State?s duty to administer public justice effectively where it seeks to act beyond its proper limited function see Stephen C. Perks, The Political Economy of A Christian Society, pp. 207ff.
I should add here that Conservatives are often not much better than socialists in their thinking. Indeed, modern Conservatism is often merely an alternative style of socialism. The only real difference is that Conservative socialist ideals come into play at a higher income bracket. I remember one Conservative councillor stating his philosophy in this way: "My car is blue, but there is a streak of red down it." The problem is that so often this streak of red turns out to be the undercoat.
é Copyright 2003 Kuyper Foundation
2004-03-11 03:18 | User Profile
Newbies should note that there is a VAST difference between leftist socialism [e.g. France] and Nazism. One PRESERVES White culture and people, the other trashes it.
Protecting your own genotype while excluding all others is a healthy idea that should never be lumped in with any Marxist-type ideology. Hitler was a nationalist while commies are internationalist egalitarians bent on a NWO [or JWO].
[edited]
2004-03-11 13:46 | User Profile
[QUOTE]But what is more astonishing is that, given the track record of socialist States from Hitler?s Third Reich and Stalin?s Soviet regime, through to the tin-pot imitators of these oppressive States in the Third World, clergymen should see the socialist State as a liberator of the poor and defender of the oppressed. [/QUOTE]
Indeed, but in its place you would urge upon us the wage slavery of Wal-Mart (stock clerks make $15,000/year) and the soul-killing consumer media machine of Eisner's Disney?
Both socialism and capitalism are the enemy.
I can't say whether the Cardinal is "unlearned" or even whether he in fact endorses socialism, but certainly Church is right in condemning modern capitalism, which contradicts each of the pillars of healthy human society point for point: 1. [B]Marriage/family [/B] by promotion of every kind of perversion; Solidarity through the destruction of every organic association like extended families, local schools, small farming cooperatives, local unions, and so forth; 2. [B]Subsidiarity[/B] by the concentration of wealth in the hands of faceless corporate bureaucrats on Wall Street and the concentration of state police power by faceless government bureaucrats in Washington; 3. [B]Private Property [/B] - which by definition consists in a unity of ownership and control of tangible assets - by turning vast wealth to the management of corporate bureacrats; 4. [B]Nationalism [/B] - by the bald faced refusal to enforce borders in the teeth of national laws and the forced amalgamation of races and peoples into a generic brown mass.
[QUOTE]The irony does not end here however. The very values that the Cardinal is reported as championing, "liberty, equality, fraternity" were the shibboleth of a revolution that erupted largely as a violent reaction against that very oppression of the masses in which the Roman Catholic Church was so complicit. [/QUOTE]
I don't know what the Cardinal personally is championing, but the Catholic Church rejects both capitalism and socialism and prescribes a third way - a truly natural and organic way - to organize every aspect of human society. See above.
[QUOTE]This is truly astonishing. One wonders whether this "outstanding Catholic intellectual" ever read a word of twentieth century history[/QUOTE].
One also wonders if he's ever read the Catechism.
[QUOTE]Was it the ideology of capitalism that enslaved and slaughtered millions in the concentration camps of Hitler and Stalin? When and where has capitalism led to the wholesale enslavement of men? [/QUOTE]
Was it socialism that gave the world the pornography industry? Did socialism give the world sodomite marriage? This author can't be blamed for being stuck in the capitalism/socialism dichotomy, I guess.
[QUOTE]The ideology behind Hitler?s Third Reich and Stalin?s Soviet Russia was not capitalism, it was socialism?red in tooth and claw. [/QUOTE]
They were the same. The German Nazis allowed their subjects much more room to breath - allowing broad protection of private property by Germans, for example - than did the Jewish Bolsheviks. Other than that, both were capitalism's corporate state taken to their logical conclusions.
[QUOTE]Can someone tell me, please, which mass murdering political regimes of the twentieth century (or any other century for that matter) were motivated by the ideology of capitalism? [/QUOTE]
We killed a couple million people in Vietnam, does that count?
[QUOTE]This obsession with socialism by Christians is not confined to the Roman Catholic Church however. [/QUOTE]
The Catholic Church condemns both capitalism and socialism officially, but I can't say what 1.3 billion Catholics say. Everybody's got an opinion these days.
[QUOTE]Of course it would be absurd to argue that free market capitalism is the answer to man?s problems, that poverty itself can be eradicated completely by adopting the capitalist form of economic organisation. But this does not mean that society should not adopt a capitalist form of economic organisation, merely that its adoption, per se, would not solve all the problems of poverty. [/QUOTE]
The author is confused, what can I say? Enough of this.
Read "Outline of Sanity" by Chesterton, it's all there.
Neither Left nor Right but the Third Position!
Walter
2004-03-27 13:40 | User Profile
No nation on this earth past or present has ever existed without some degree of Socialism. There can be no argument about it, for the very essense of Society and Civilization require it. We all live in Communities to serve our needs, and that is Socialism, we collect from each member of society to provide, Water, police , firemen, teachers and schools, courts, it is Socialism. And it is America. There is nothing in our Constitution that says we are a Capitalistic Society, or Free Enterprize, those ideas are born out of the Right to Property.
Often we here from the Conservative that FDR began Socialism, or LBJ and the Great Society, for those who believe this, may I ask what was a "Land Grant" a "Mining Grant" a "Timber Grant" a Railroad grant. Was it a government hand out or not.
And I have to ask what plan was there for 10 million or so, black Slaves who were freed after the civil war, they had no property, no money, nothing, few even had a pair of shoes, most were dumped into a white society that was itself facing near starvation in the south, so what was to happen to all these people without government help.
Somewhere in the above post, A case is made for greatness of the American Industrial Revolution and how it helped the working class, perhaps it did, but in 1900 more than half the people who migrated to America went back to Europe because conditions were so bad for working people in America.
The giant leap forward for America's working class occured after FDR, not before, and there is nothing to go back to in so far as a better America.
I Consider myself to be a Liberal Democrat, but
I don't believe in Abortion, in particular Partial birth abortion
I do beleive in a balanced Budget ,
I do not believe in Gay Marriage
I beleive that Welfare is Temporary help, that should be paid back in time
I do believe in protecting American Jobs and Industry
I do not believe in wholesale Immigration
I do not believe America should be bi lingual
Does this sound confusing to you, well
I find it confusing that a Liberal Democrat can balance the budget, reform welfare, cut the size of Government and reduce spending, while Conservatives run the national debt to record levels, both Reagan and Bush, destroy or aid in the destruction of the water and air we breath and drink. And Conservative Bush wants wholesale open border immigration, give tax cuts for outsourcing and moving industry out of the country.
Thats why I am a NeoLiberal, I don't know what the hell is going on anymore, .
2004-03-27 22:28 | User Profile
NeoLiberal wrote:
I find it confusing that a Liberal Democrat can balance the budget, reform welfare, cut the size of Government and reduce spending, while Conservatives run the national debt to record levels, both Reagan and Bush, destroy or aid in the destruction of the water and air we breath and drink. And Conservative Bush wants wholesale open border immigration, give tax cuts for outsourcing and moving industry out of the country.
Well, the words "liberal" and "conservative" mean little today anyway. For example, in 1950, if you said that you were a "conservative," people knew what you stood for. Today, a conservative is.........what?
2004-03-28 13:25 | User Profile
Socialism is Communism with some Capitalism permitted, Lenin was a Socialist, Stalin a communist.
Hitler began as a Socialist in name only, he never implemented Socialism in Germany, after his study of Mussilini in Italy, he came to admire the system known as Fascisism, and once he gained the support of the German Nobility and a pledge of allegiance from the German official Army, he abandoned any Socialist ideas completely, fact is he had most of the Socialist leaders in the NAZI party killed. Once in power he was nothing more than a Fascist Military Dictator, with the support of the German ruling class.
The Communist ,Socialist system fails for many reason,but more than any, it fails because it lacks the Venture Capitalist. No bureaucrat can replace the Venture Capitalist. Take the case of Wal-Mart, a Bureaucrat would view the marketplace as being sufficient with Retail stores, no need for another, the Venture Capitalist Walton thought differently and launched Wal-Mart. You know the rest of the story. Had Walton failed, he simply would have lost some of his money, had a Bureaucrat failed he would probably lose his life, or for certain his position in life. Success requires risk, and Bureaucrats do not take risk, they know the consequence of failure and he has nothing to gain but plenty to lose.
Capitalism on its own without regulation and temperment is little more than a dog eat dog society and that is what Civilization has been fleeing since the beginnig of time. By encouraging and aiding capitalism, we create the tree the spouts the fruit, but the fruit must be shared by all of society, who provides the Infrastructure and security for the Capitalist to succeed, in other words we tax it to support Infrastructure of a Nation, that provides the Secure place and educated work force to support the Industry of the Capitalist. This system worked remarkably well for the past 60 years, but now Greed is changing things, the Capitalist wants to have his cake and eat too. The Capitalist now wants all the Fruit, while still enjoying the Infrastructure of the Nation where he markets his product, he does not want to share in the cost of its blessings. (Outsourcing) (Offshore)
The Capitalist is not satisfied with having it all, he wants to further change the relationship by creating the misery and fear of Unemployment to force down the standard of living of the working class, not only by Outsourcing, but by wholesale Immigration of a peasant class of people happy to accept whatever "Crums" fall from the table.
One of the first acts of the Continental Congress was to enact "Tariff's" on Serf and Peasant produced goods from abroad, today such Produced goods is heralded as the New World Order and the Global Economy, better called the new Serf and peasant economy. He also wants Americans to shoulder the burden of the Military under the guise of National defense, but its real purpose is to insure the Financial saftey of his Sweatshop investments, (Smedley Butler) in foriegn countries.
I am rambling on here, so time to end, BH