There is no Catholic case for Communism.

ean Det­t­loff at Amer­i­ca Mag­a­zine seems to think there is such a case, but he’s lazy and does­n’t give us one either. Much of his arti­cle is spent telling us that many Com­mu­nists are very nice peo­ple, and not all of them are athe­ists, and a lot of their goals are things the Catholic Church is friend­ly to, like the right to health care. I’m sur­prised any of that is in dis­pute. Mr. Det­t­loff does not tell us why Com­mu­nism is a good way to achieve any of them; he just tells us the goals are nice. Nor does he account for St. John Paul II’s words con­demn­ing Com­mu­nism; he does not tell us how there is a Catholic case for a sys­tem that mur­dered upwards of one hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple. He can’t be both­ered to men­tion these things, except in the most oblique way:

Com­mu­nism in its socio-polit­i­cal expres­sion has at times caused great human and eco­log­i­cal suf­fer­ing. Any good com­mu­nist is quick to admit as much, not least because com­mu­nism is an unfin­ished project that depends on the recog­ni­tion of its real and trag­ic mis­takes. But com­mu­nists are not the only ones who have to answer for cre­at­ing human suf­fer­ing.

Dis­miss­ing the mur­der of 100,000,000 peo­ple as a “trag­ic mis­take” shows a real tal­ent at under­state­ment. Ilya Somin at the Wash­ing­ton Post is more spe­cif­ic:

Col­lec­tive­ly, com­mu­nist states killed as many as 100 mil­lion peo­ple, more than all oth­er repres­sive regimes com­bined dur­ing the same time peri­od. By far the biggest toll arose from com­mu­nist efforts to col­lec­tivize agri­cul­ture and elim­i­nate inde­pen­dent prop­er­ty-own­ing peas­ants. In Chi­na alone, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap For­ward led to a man-made famine in which as many as 45 mil­lion peo­ple per­ished – the sin­gle biggest episode of mass mur­der in all of world his­to­ry. In the Sovi­et Union, Joseph Stalin’s col­lec­tiviza­tion – which served as a mod­el for sim­i­lar efforts in Chi­na and else­where – took some 6 to 10 mil­lion lives. Mass famines occurred in many oth­er com­mu­nist regimes, rang­ing from North Korea to Ethiopia. In each of these cas­es, com­mu­nist rulers were well aware that their poli­cies were caus­ing mass death, and in each they per­sist­ed nonethe­less, often because they con­sid­ered the exter­mi­na­tion of ‘Kulak’ peas­ants a fea­ture rather than a bug.

While col­lec­tiviza­tion was the sin­gle biggest killer, com­mu­nist regimes also engaged in oth­er forms of mass mur­der on an epic scale. Mil­lions died in slave labor camps, such as the USSR’s Gulag sys­tem and its equiv­a­lents else­where. Many oth­ers were killed in more con­ven­tion­al mass exe­cu­tions, such as those of Stalin’s Great Purge, and the ‘Killing Fields’ of Cam­bo­dia.

Mr. Somin says “biggest sin­gle episode of mass mur­der.” He says “mass famines.” He says “slave labor camps.” He says “great purge.” He says “killing fields.”

Mr. Det­t­loff says “trag­ic mis­takes.” He only both­ers with specifics when he’s crit­i­ciz­ing West­ern cap­i­tal­ism:

Colo­nial cap­i­tal­ism, togeth­er with the assump­tions of white suprema­cy, ush­ered in cen­turies of unbri­dled ter­ror­ism on pop­u­la­tions around the world, cre­at­ing a sys­tem in which peo­ple could be bought and sold as com­modi­ties. Even after the offi­cial abo­li­tion of slav­ery in the largest world economies—which required a cost­ly civ­il war in the Unit­ed States—the effects of that sys­tem live on, and cap­i­tal­ist nations and transna­tion­al com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to exploit poor and work­ing peo­ple at home and abroad.

All of which is true, but hard­ly makes a case for Com­mu­nism so much as it makes a case for nei­ther. It’s not hon­est argu­ment to call cap­i­tal­ism “unbri­dled ter­ror­ism” but the record of Com­mu­nism a “mis­take.” That’s spe­cial plead­ing.

But while say­ing cap­i­tal­ism is to blame for every evil men do under the sun, Mr. Det­t­loff spends as much time try­ing to per­suade us that Com­mu­nists are not the total­i­tar­i­an meany-mean­ies they are reput­ed to be:

Con­trary to the fear that com­mu­nists sim­ply want everyone’s ‘stuff,’ the abo­li­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty, for which Marx and Engels called, means the abo­li­tion of pri­vate­ly owned ways of gen­er­at­ing wealth, not tak­ing the clothes off your back or your dad’s tie col­lec­tion. As the pop­u­lar say­ing in com­mu­nist cir­cles goes, com­mu­nists do not want your tooth­brush.

Right. And this is why in Cuba gov­ern­ment-owned ways of gen­er­at­ing wealth gen­er­at­ed so much wealth that there was a short­age of toi­let paper. While Mr. Det­t­loff is telling us that Com­mu­nism promis­es a lot of won­der­ful things and is great in the­o­ry, he offers no evi­dence that its promis­es have been ful­filled in real­i­ty after a hun­dred years. He says noth­ing about the record of mass killing, mass mis­ery, mass pover­ty, and total­i­tar­i­an­ism that it has pro­duced. (Oh, yeah, well, he does say “trag­ic mis­takes.”)

•••

Mean­while, here is what the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church says:

The Church has reject­ed the total­i­tar­i­an and athe­is­tic ide­olo­gies asso­ci­at­ed in mod­ern times with ‘com­mu­nism’ or ‘social­ism.’ .… Reg­u­lat­ing the econ­o­my sole­ly by cen­tral­ized plan­ning per­verts the basis of social bonds.

Mr. Det­t­loff says, “Well, com­mu­nists, they don’t want your tooth­brush, just the means of pro­duc­tion.” But that does­n’t make a Catholic case for com­mu­nism; the Cat­e­chism specif­i­cal­ly rejects even “cen­tral­ized plan­ning.”

In Centes­simus Annus John Paul II says that social­ism rejects a dis­tinct­ly Chris­t­ian view of the human per­son:

Social­ism con­sid­ers the indi­vid­ual per­son sim­ply as an ele­ment, a mol­e­cule with­in the social organ­ism, so that the good of the indi­vid­ual is com­plete­ly sub­or­di­nat­ed to the func­tion­ing of the socio-eco­nom­ic mech­a­nism. Social­ism like­wise main­tains that the good of the indi­vid­ual can be real­ized with­out ref­er­ence to his free choice, to the unique and exclu­sive respon­si­bil­i­ty which he exer­cis­es in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social rela­tion­ships, and the con­cept of the per­son as the autonomous sub­ject of moral deci­sion dis­ap­pears, the very sub­ject whose deci­sions build the social order. From this mis­tak­en con­cep­tion of the per­son there arise both a dis­tor­tion of law, which defines the sphere of the exer­cise of free­dom, and an oppo­si­tion to pri­vate prop­er­ty. A per­son who is deprived of some­thing he can call “his own,” and of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of earn­ing a liv­ing through his own ini­tia­tive, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who con­trol it. This makes it much more dif­fi­cult for him to rec­og­nize his dig­ni­ty as a per­son, and hin­ders progress towards the build­ing up of an authen­tic human com­mu­ni­ty. (CA 10)

As for Marx­ism, John Paul II says that it too denies the “tran­scen­dent dig­ni­ty of the human per­son,” in that it gives one class of per­sons absolute pow­er over the rights of anoth­er class of per­sons (CA 44).

Under Com­mu­nism, says John Paul II, “mass­es of peo­ple [are] sub­ject­ed to exploita­tion and oppres­sion.” Com­mu­nism, he says, is thus an offense against social jus­tice. Com­mu­nism can not sat­is­fy “mate­r­i­al human needs.” At the same time, Com­mu­nism “total­ly reduces man to the sphere of eco­nom­ics and the sat­is­fac­tion of mate­r­i­al needs” (CA 19).

•••

I appre­ci­ate that Fr. Mal­one says he pub­lished Mr. Det­t­lof­f’s essay not because he agrees with it but because he felt it was worth read­ing. Fair enough. But if Mr. Det­t­loff is going to make a Catholic case for Com­mu­nism, he needs to do more than show that some of the objec­tives of Com­mu­nism match the objec­tives of the Church. He needs to show that Com­mu­nism can achieve those objec­tives in spite of its actu­al record of fail­ure, human mis­ery, and mass mur­der. And he needs to show why Catholics can some­how dis­re­gard the Mag­is­te­r­i­al cri­tique of Com­mu­nism giv­en to us by St. John Paul II. He does nei­ther.