Final reflections on 29 Oct session: Marxism

I've probably spent an inordinately long time reflecting on the last meeting, but I wanted to give a thorough treatment of the issue of authority in the Church in relation to Catholic social teaching, but also to give space to an important sets of issues that came up in our discussion of Marxism. It's to the latter that I now turn.

One of the things that struck me forcibly about last Wednesday was the strength of feeling about Marxism that was expressed by those who had lived in countries from the former Soviet Bloc. On reflection, my surprise was in itself surprising: why on earth wouldn't people who had suffered from totalitarianism feel strongly about it? Part of the answer to that (besides my naivety) is the difference between experience and ideas. My main contact with Marxism has been as part of an undergraduate philosophy course on Hegel and Marx and with a few communist (British) intellectuals: that's very different from the experience of the reality of a system which declared itself Marxist.

Frankly, I'd been struggling over what to say about all that, other than to acknowledge the tensions. However, re-arranging some bookshelves this morning brought to light a collection of Roger Scruton's essays (Gentle Regrets) which I hadn't looked at for almost ten years. In one essay, 'Stealing from churches', he reflects on the influence of religion, particularly Catholicism, in his life, and, more particularly, on a (chaste) love affair with a young woman in Communist Poland:

The communists had justified themselves as the servants of history, the midwives who would ease the birth of a new order that was in any case inevitable. In every place where they had achieved power they released what was lowest in human nature, rejoicing in destruction and despising every loyalty that was not motivated by cynical calculation. In every communist country you were presented with a vision of chaos. It was as though a great tide flowed through the sewers, into which the people were being thrust by the armed insentient guardians of an order whose main aim was to make people unnecessary, an order in which, as Marx and Engels rightly prophesied, 'the government of men would give way to the administration of things'. (p.76)

That description of the experience of communism, however, reflects directly the ideas of Marxism:

Al the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property. (Marx: Communist Manifesto.)

In other words, the reality of the communism is not accidental to its understanding of human beings but flows as a direct consequence of its ideas.

One of the features of this course that I was determined to focus on -and which is different from many other treatments of Catholic social teaching- is that of examining the teaching as a coherent whole, and of examining its theological and anthropological underpinnings: without understanding the theoretical basis for Catholic social teaching, it becomes easily seen as merely a collection of rather fuzzy ideas, some more plausible than others. Unless account is taken of key aspects of that theoretical underpinning, the full strength (and indeed content) of the teaching can't be seen.

It's difficult to sum up the essentials of that theoretical underpinning since it is so entwined with the whole of the Catholic understanding of the world and God. But key issues that spring immediately to mind are:

a) The supernatural end of human beings in the beatific vision of God: leave out the pursuit of  God and human life makes little sense.

b) The existence of natural law based on objective truths about human nature: human beings cannot just freely remake themselves after any pattern they happen to desire.

c) The flourishing of human beings through living in communities such as the family, the voluntary associations of civil society, and the state: some patterns of life work; others don't.

d) The possibility of a real, albeit imperfect justice being achieved by virtuous action: revolution and class antagonism aren't the only solutions.


OK! That's enough about last Wednesday's class!! I'll say something about the next meeting (5 Nov) at the beginning of next week.