Communist manifesto: the abolition of man.

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1848 was the Year that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published their Communist Manifesto. The nineteenth century saw the rise of rampant unchecked capitalism, the horrors of which were vividly illustrated by Dickens and others: sixteen-hour work days in cavernous, infernal factories or in underground mines seven days a week, women and children working alongside men for a pittance, the threat of starvation if one were unemployed, unsanitary work conditions, eking out an impoverished, degrading existence just to face an early and unpleasant death.

No wonder people were ripe for the idea of communism: get rid of all the capitalist barons exploiting workers and taking up all the profits; let the State take over the factories and run them, and then divide up the profits evenly and fairly. In fact, no one should own anything of his own, but everything should be held in common. Isn't that an idea right from the Bible? "Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common" (Acts 4:32). Were not all the early Christians communists then? Had Marx and Engels, like Saint Francis of Assisi, rediscovered the original, primitive essence of Christianity?

THE DENIAL OF GOD

Actually, the two protocommunists, Marx and Engels, had no time for Christianity or for supernatural religion in general. They did like the idea of 'the State' as the be-all and end-all of human existence. In fact, the State would take the place of the "God-myth? After all, in their theory, unlike God, the State (and the economy) was real, and could provide for all needs. Everyone would be employed and no one would stand out or dominate over another.

The main problem with this theory is that it does not work. Why? There are various reasons, outlined cogently by Leo XIII in his landmark encyclical of 1891, Rerum novarum, and developed by John Paul II in his own Centesimus annus (promulgated on the hundredth anniversary of Rerum novarum in 1991). Although the arguments the popes put forward are complex, they can be reduced to one basic principle: communism (Scientific Socialism) denies the dignity of the human person, particularly by denying human freedom. By reducing man to a cog in the economic machine, communism sees man himself as a purely material entity, to be manipulated, enslaved, or ultimately destroyed. As one author put it, the communists treated human beings like so many tons of concrete, to be shoveled around at will.

Yes, ideas do have consequences: I am not sure if Marx and Engels saw where their manifesto would lead, but Pope Leo XIII certainly did. To deny human freedom, by taking away fundamental human rights, is to diminish and ultimately negate who a human person is, leading to what C.S. Lewis called the 'abolition of man? The economic and societal ills of communism, from the Gulag work camps to the KGB torture chambers, and their equivalents in Asia, Africa and Cuba, are inevitable consequences of more fundamental theological and anthropological errors, which people in our own day are once again swallowing all too readily.

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One hallmark of communism is the denial of the right to private property. Now one might ask, what does property have to do with human dignity? Are not many people without much property at all, if any? Do not those in religious orders give up their right to own property? Yet they still have dignity. Leo XIII and John Paul II both saw very clearly that it is by owning one's own property that one maintains an independence from the State. Furthermore, we work harder for what we own, we take a healthy pride in our land, goods and work, for which we receive (or should receive) fitting remuneration. Man is meant to be provident for himself and for those under his care. That is part of what it means to be in God's image. To have everything doled out by the State is to reduce man to a state of servitude, indeed slavery. It is to put the State in the place of God; hence, as Pius XI declared in 1937 in Divini redemptoris, communism is inherently atheistic. We really cannot serve two masters.

CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES

Christian 'communism' (I use scare quotes since it is not really communism as we know it) is essentially and fundamentally different. When a farmer has his farm seized by the Bolshevik or Chinese state, he is certainly giving up everything he has to live on, but doing so, to put it mildly, unwillingly. When the early Christians, or members of a modern-day religious order, give up all they have to live on, they are doing so freely, for the love of God. The key difference here is freedom. Sure enough, God is pleased when we give back to him what He has given us; after all, all our gifts are ultimately His. But He is pleased only when we do so freely and willingly.

On the other hand the State has no right to our freedom, nor any authority to take away our other rights. In fact, the State is there to serve man, which is why we still call government employees 'civil servants."

Benedict XVI reiterates the errors of communism in both his encyclicals, Deus caritas est and Spe salvi: Communism, he argues, represents the error of placing all our love and our hope in this world, rather than in the next. It is a loss of the supernatural dimension of man, and therefore is a manifestation of the religion of the Antichrist, which, as the Catechism states, is a type of 'secular messianism' of seeing Christ as a king who will reform this world here and now.

How far from this is the message of the real Christ, whose kingdom is not of this world, who offers us real hope, eternal hope, beyond this age, the form of which is already passing away. The Pope is asking people of all faiths to make a choice as to where they will place their hope. The early Christians had it right; the modern secularists, communist or otherwise, do not.

John Paul Meenan teaches Theology and Science at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy in Barry's Bay, Onatario.