Following some criticism of his remarks on economics, Pope Francis has denied that he’s a Marxist. “Marxist ideology is wrong. But in my life I have known many Marxists who are good people, so I don’t feel offended.”
I’m happy that His Holiness has taken criticism in his stride: insulting the Pope would be the last thing on the mind of anyone who respects the throne he occupies.
However, the best way to pre-empt such criticism in the future would be for the pontiff to steer clear of this subject altogether. Otherwise he lays himself wide open to slings and arrows.
I for one have never met a good man who’s a Marxist. I’ve met many good souls who describe themselves as Marxists but, when probed, display total ignorance of that doctrine. But this only means that I’ve met many good-natured ignoramuses who aren’t very bright.
But all Marxists who espouse this doctrine in the knowledge of what it is are wicked. That is, unless you can fault the logic that promulgators of evil are themselves evil.
I don’t know how closely His Holiness has studied the works of Marx or Engels, or if he has ever opened them at all. Here’s a quick quotation from a man who has.
Adolf Hitler readily acknowledged his indebtedness to Marxism in private, even as he attacked it in public. Hermann Rauschning recalls in his memoir Hitler Speaks the führer saying that “the whole of National Socialism” was based on Marx. “I have learned a great deal from Marx,” conceded Hitler, “as I do not hesitate to admit.”
Has the Pope known many Nazis who are good people? Would he ever say that?
True enough, not only Hitler but also his fellow satanists further east owe Marx a debt of gratitude. Every evil they perpetrated sprang from the principles enunciated in the writings of Marx and Engels.
Slave labour (what The Communist Manifesto describes as creating ‘labour armies’), abolition of all private property, keeping those who disagree in concentration camps (‘specially guarded places’, in Engel’s phrase), homicidal atheism, anti-Semitism, genocidal or ideological mass murder are all spelled out in the founding documents of Marxism.
For the sake of brevity I’ll only give you a little flavour, and boy does it stink to high heaven.
“All the other [non-Marxist] large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary holocaust. For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary… these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character… [A general war will] wipe out all this racial trash.”
“…only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution… there will be a struggle, an ‘inexorable life-and-death struggle’, against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating fight and ruthless terror – not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!”
“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”
Yet perhaps the greatest damage caused by this diabolical doctrine is philosophical. Like his fellow intellectual terrorists Darwin and Freud, Marx stepped outside his ostensible field, economics in his case, to inflict upon subsequent generations a wicked way of looking at human societies.
It’s thanks to Marx that intellectuals and laymen alike predominantly see society as a battleground for two belligerently hostile classes: the haves and the have-nots, or the bourgeois and the proletariat in simon-pure Marxist terminology.
Evil ideologies are deliberately designed by evil men to encourage evil in others. If, for old times’ sake, we equate evil with the seven deadly sins, then Marxism actively encourages most of them.
I can think of few ideologies more evil than the one telling most people that their relative poverty is both unjust and correctable by political, preferably violent, action. The fervour of violence inspired by Marxism intensifies as we move eastwards in Europe. But the underlying assumption holds sway everywhere.
In fact, the phrase “We’re all Marxists now”, first used 50 years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto, keeps popping up in the writings of even those who ought to know better, such as in the essay Can We Be Good Without God? by the American professor Glenn Tinder. Well, include me out, as his countrymen would say.
This view of the world is cannibalistic in theory and manifestly wrong in practice. A civilised society isn’t made up of warring factions. It’s a complex structure organised as a hierarchy of ranks. The more successful an economy (and only a free economy can be successful), the more it encourages productive aspiration rather than, as Marxism does, destructive envy.
Any ideology aiming to impose a uniform world order is wicked – regardless of its ostensible worthiness. Any attempt to practise the kind of universalism such ideologies preach, be it class struggle, racial purity, equality, democracy or what have you, will always fail – but not before causing untold misery and murdering millions.
Marxism is, without close seconds, the most pernicious of such ideologies – both in theory and in practice. If we discount the ignoramuses to whom Lenin referred as ‘useful idiots’, then there’s only one kind of good Marxist. A dead one.
Mea culpa: Trenton Oldfield has kindly pointed out a factual error in my piece about him. Apparently the court decision to overturn his deportation was based not on his wife’s and daughter’s race but solely on his character. I apologise for this oversight, and my only excuse is that it was also committed by every newspaper in the land. I also commend Mr Oldfield for ignoring my harsh but fair comments about his character.
Mea maxima culpa: A Catholic priest has pointed out a theological error in my facetious laments that Nelson Mandela still hasn’t risen. As the Father correctly observed, the rising should occur on the third day after the funeral, not death. Since Mr Mandela was only buried yesterday, watch this space.