Are the Marxists on to something? Catholic World Report – Catholic World Report

Karl Marx Monument in Chemnitz, Germany. (animaflora | us.fotolia.com)

Marxism is basic to the history of the 20th century. Such was the view of Catholic philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989). In particular, he thought its contradictions and consequent disintegration led to the soft post-1960s totalitarianism that is still with us today.

Del Noces account was complex, and much of it relates specifically to the situation in his native Italy. Even so, an aspect worth wider discussion is his observation that historical materialism is valid, but precisely only as an explanation of the secular forms of thought and of their sequence.

Which means that excluding transcendent goods from public thought ultimately reduces it to what Marx said it was: an expression of the interests of dominant social and economic classes.

That seems believable: without standards of truth, beauty, and goodness that transcend this-worldly purposes, life becomes a battle of wills, and moral claims become slogans, battle flags, or opportunistic maneuvers rather than principles held as true. On the resulting field of battle, it is strength and not justice that rules.

Such a view would treat woke progressivism, the version of liberalism now dominant, as a ruling class ideology. What else could it be, a consistent Marxist would ask, when powerful institutions promote it so single-mindedly?

This interpretation of an outlook that claims to stand up for the excluded and marginalized sounds surprising, but it works better than might be expected.

Woke progressivismattributes inequalities that affect non-dominant social groups to discrimination, and demands their elimination by whatever means are necessary. So if there arent many female Native American particle physicists, it views that as oppression: some voices are being excluded in discussions of the basic nature of physical reality.

Respectable people now find that situation intolerable, and insist that those involved put an end to it.

But woke demands go far beyond personnel policy. Disproportionate representation and even outright discrimination are innate to all historically-evolved social arrangementsnational distinctions, religious and cultural communities, settled family forms, understandings of the sexes and their relationships.

Thus, the Constitution was intended to establish a system of law and government that promotes the common welfare of Americans. And Christianity to bring salvation to those who accept itthat is, to Christians. So the Constitution and Christianity treat undocumented Muslim immigrants unfavorably. For example, they cannot participate in central rituals of belonging like voting in U.S. federal elections and receiving communion in Catholic churches.

Woke progressives therefore view the American constitutional order and Christianity as structures of exclusion, and demand their transformation in order to put inclusiveness at their center. Anything else would, in a predominantly white and Christian country like America, support white Christian supremacynow considered the worst sin possible.

America must therefore open her borders and provide special support for newcomers, and Christianity must transform itself into nonjudgmental outreach, dialogue, accompaniment, and promotion of secular social betterment. Bothwe are toldare here to listen, learn, change, and do better as allies to the excluded and marginalized.

Progressive opinion, which now dominates the respectable mainstream, views these principles as morally unquestionable and infinitely superior to past views.

But what then? Traditional religions, and cultural communities guarded by national borders, had social authority and function. They told people how to live and gave them ways to cooperate with others. That authority and functionality must somehow be replaced.

Of necessity, they are picked up by government, and by bureaucracies and commercial enterprises supervised by government. Such institutions are rule-based hierarchies designed to advance explicit goals. As such, they lend themselves to regulation intended to bring them in line with the standards that now count as just. So they become the only social institutions considered legitimate in woke progressive society.

As for the people at large, they become a disconnected mass of consumers, productive resources, and clients of social programs with no ability to think, act, or organize on their own. Any such action would involve bigotryreliance on connections like nationality and cultural community that dont include everyone equallyand rejection of the sciencethe view of things promulgated by official functionaries like Anthony Fauci.

The effect of woke progressivism, then, is to make ordinary people powerless and transfer all power and social functioning to money and bureaucracy. Progressives say that the arc of history bends toward justice. It appears that applies to current history only if justice involves rule by billionaires and bureaucrats.

And that is just what Marx would have predicted: expressions like social justice, human rights, and equity, in their current secular usage, are masks for ruling class interests. They mean that the rich and powerful should run everything.

That, at any rate, would be the consistent Marxist analysis. Conditions seem to support it: weve been hearing a lot about equity recently, but the more we hear about it the more we become unequal in wealth, power, social standing, and basic goods like life expectancy and stable family connections. Feminism appears to have made women less happy, transgenderism has multiplied the problems of vulnerable young people, and the biggest result of Black Lives Matter seems to be more dead black people (along with some others).

The educated, wealthy, and influential, who got where they are by pursuing their own interests, are increasingly giving their support to an increasingly woke Democratic Party. And woke progressivism has been widely adopted by the most powerful and influential social institutions. These include universities, scientific, cultural, religious, and professional bodies, prestige media such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and the Biden administration.

They also include major corporations, who have been quite friendly to the gender agenda, and made a huge investment in the Black Lives Matter movement. Even banks and investment management companies have gotten into the act through use of ESG scores in funding decisions.

So its believable that woke progressivism is not what it says it is, but is a ruling class ideology. As such, it has the actual predictable effect of increasing inequalities in power and wealth. That, by the way, is similar to a tendency Del Noce noted in Marxism itself: its actual effectslike poverty, slavery, violence, militarized nationalism, and the alienation of man from manhave been the precise opposite of claimed intentions.

Where is the current system likely to go, and what should be done about itespecially by Catholics?

The institutional and cultural forces supporting current tendencies are immensely powerful. Worse, their opponents have been unable to articulate a contrary vision that a propagandized, browbeaten, and radically divided public can find compelling.

Even so, current tendencies wont last forever. The people are sometimes thoughtless, misled, or ill-informed, but they are not insane. Their rulers, in contrast, are in the grip of an ideology that they cannot escape, because they have staked their legitimacy as rulers on the promise to bring liberation and equality by abolishing the effect of family, cultural, national, and religious connectionsthus making money and bureaucracy omnipotent.

Already, the results have included rancor, incompetence, arbitrary governance, popular disaffection, small-scale social chaos, and stupid policies such as depolicing that cant possibly succeed. To make matters worse, woke progressivism has gone international, promoting a rainbow global empire by means that include confronting nuclear powers and bullying Third World nations. None of this is going to end well.

Current public thought needs to be replaced with something better. That will require, among other things, recognitionat first by some and then by manyof the fundamental problems of the current public order. There will need to be a general turn toward better ways of life and thought, and above all a return of transcendent goodsas a practical matter, Godinto public life so it can be understood as more than a battle of wills.

All that is very difficult, but it will happen because people ultimately need to find a tolerable way to live. Those convinced by the liberal vision of individual sovereignty and social neutrality believe such changes would threaten freedom, rationality, and human dignity. But these goods have no place in the system of contending forces that is the spiritual world of secular thought. Events are making that situation ever more obvious: eventually thought will catch up with reality, and the world will change.

Related at CWR: Atheism: The core of modern Western culture in the thought of Augusto del Noce (Dec. 14, 2020) by Dr. Thomas R. Rourke

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Are the Marxists on to something? Catholic World Report - Catholic World Report