Comments on: “Ratzingerian Marxists” and the Anthropological Emergency

By: Nigel

Nigel — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:45:11 +0000

I have noted the strong social welfare component in Pope Benedict’s pronouncements and wondered why it is so ignored, especially in the United States. But the Marxists, in their attempt to hijack Benedict, have once more been led astray by their ideological blinders and naiveté. The Pope’s message is valued because it says the admonition “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” imposes an obligation on citizens of democracies to use government to show care and compassion toward the less fortunate among them. The message resists the takeover of government by those guided only by personal greed and “rugged individualism.”

It is almost comical to see the blinkered leftists try to hijack this rather specific platform and find an ally to wage an amorphous war against “common enemy…a consumerist-inflected secularism and a certain strain of upper-middle-class liberalism with its attendant libertarian ethics.”

By: Holgrave

Holgrave — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 01:58:04 +0000

I’d think Ratzinger/Benedict’s rather pointed engagement with Marx in Spes Salvi would sound a caution against associating the pontiff with Marxism. In this encyclical he recognizes Marx’s genius but quickly exposes the blind futility of Marx’s thought when he characterizes Marx’s error as “materialism” and a lack of understanding of the human character: “He forgot man and he forgot man’s freedom.” While certainly no libertarian, Benedict clearly recognizes the reality of human freedom at every level.

Additionally, in the same encyclical he characterized modernity as antichrist, typified by the French Revolution. I don’t think we can accuse him of any joining of “transcendence and revolution.”

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:27:22 +0000

I will only add that State-expansion is as responsible as economic-decentralization for a disintegrated, “freedom of indifference”-centric anthropology (meant to add that).

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:23:52 +0000

While their sympathy is a welcome promise for further dialogue and less polarization, the Marxists fall short in their notion of a relational-anthropology. They are certainly right that life-Christ is transformative for all aspects of life–political, social and economic very much included. Nonetheless, the Marxists dogmatically uphold an economic ideology, one that reality has shown wanting, as Pope Benedict XVI affirmed in Cuba. Thus, they conceive a relational-anthropology in largely economic terms and by default associate a relational-anthropology with “public” ownership of property.

In actuality, “public” ownership only means tax-dollar funded and all governments–regardless of how apparently democratically conceived–require political authority. Thus,complete “public” ownership, in actuality, always means State-ownership and this means bureaucratic-ownership.
While most seriously engaged citizens in the West, sparing creative subgroups as the above-mentioned, aren’t Marxists, we make a similiar mistake. That is, we tend to associate social solidarity with State-expansion, since, after all, the tax-dollar funded sector is the “public” sector. Nonetheless, while State-expansion funded is un-synonymous with solidarity, neither is subsidiarity synonymous with indiscriminate economic decentralization.

The Marxists Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI fans could potentially play an important tole in challenging us to better consider the consequences of our faith in social and economic life, a task that includes better understanding subsidiarity and solidarity.

By: Ryan M.

Ryan M. — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 22:11:16 +0000

For me, this post (which was very interesting, by the way) called to mind the on-going dialogue between John Milbank and Slavoj Zizek… that is to say, I’m not all that surprised that some Marxists would find much to admire in the thinking of a Pontiff who was a close collaborator with some of the leading lights of the Nouvelle movement.