Christians & the class struggle
Cort, John C.
debt is unpayable, as even De la Madrid cabinet members credit suspension, Mexico only stands to gain by halting the privately acknowledge. The only question is whether default...
...A case could be made for the stateThe second was more positive than the first...
...And this exclusion is a far, far more difficult what...
...the recognition and the understanding of a reality'which The conclusion sounds harsh...
...his Power of the Poor in History in 1983: Small wonder that "reformism" and "compromise" and [The] revolutionary struggle...
...Now in paperback...
...potentially abusive as the husband-wife relationship or the parent-child relationship, but very common and potentially L ET US review some of Marx's abstractions...
...And I have yet to see a KIRKPATRICK: What are the main principles of Marxism plea by Gutierrez or any other liberation theologian for the which liberation theology finds useful...
...another...
...One can which is where you are obviously determined to be, the only foresee serious divisions occurring in the church pre- responsible, the only intellectually competent course is to.tell cisely around the theme of the recognition and the the voters exactly what you have in mind...
...N AUGUST 1984, and again in April 1986, liberation theol- Neither instruction quoted or mentioned any liberation ogy hit the front pages of the world's newspapers...
...You have to ask yourself, "if I response, has decided that Marxist analysis is an important and lived in such a country, and I were young and healthy, valuable aspect of Marxism...
...There seems to be no Why do I say that Gutierrez apparently shares Marx's view allowance permitted for differing situations in twentyof class struggle...
...And the question, finally, before they read this critique...
...la Madrid policy of continuing full interest payments with A three-to-five-year total debt payment moratorium, with fresh credits and rolling over the accumulated principal lets the future interest payments limited to 20 percent of the total value banks keep the loans formally in good standing and their of exports, would give Mexico vital breathing space to put its profits intact...
...Marxism] 1972...
...272-279 of A Theology of have a peculiar political approach of our own to offer, Liberation, and of several reference notes on pp...
...struggle reflected in that passage and endorsed by Gutierrez is Of these Father Gutierrez is certainly one of the most indeed incompatible with the reality of "the community of the learned, eloquent, and dedicated of them all...
...questions the exist"democracy" (usually with the prefix "bourgeois") and ing social order in its very roots and insists on the "United States of America" have become dirty words in Latin involvement of popular power in the construction of a America and frequently appear so in the writings of liberation society of genuinely equal and free persons...
...all the rest, is clearly for Gutierrez, as it was for Marx, a universal principle...
...ing, exploitative relationship...
...I call it Liberation theologians, including Gutierrez, make a point Godwin's Disease after William Godwin, a philosophical of contrasting their method, which, they say, proceeds induc- anarchist and father-in-law of the poet Shelley, about whom tively from "the praxis of the poor" toward theoretical con- the British historian Alexander Gray wrote, "Never was there clusions, with the deductive methods of European theolo- anyone who was more entirely the embodiment of intellect and gians, who allegedly impose their theoretical conclusions from reason...
...The cost to Mexico is ever-deepening debt financial house in order, pursue economic development, and dependency, and the banks also lose in the long run by increas- begin to redress workers' living standards...
...position to reconcile with Christianity than exclusion of the rich...
...The large Chilean delega- together were not as clarifying as the medieval notions of just tion came in with a report that does mention the peasants, but wage/just profit/just price...
...Intellectuals themI suggest that liberation theologians, including Gutierrez, selves have a word for it, reductionism, but it only covers one are doing precisely the kind of thing they accuse the European part of the full, deadly pathology...
...But how...
...I think Rat"O iun one's eyes ina take a 1fethne...
...11 July 1986: 403 zinger missed the boat when he summarized the Marxist notion comes down to this: how can any sensible Christian, reflecting as being the claim that if a person "belongs to the objective carefully on these clearly contradictory positions, do otherclass of the rich, he is primarily a class enemy to be fought...
...The Latin American process is allbeings...
...For Mexico a Southwest already battered by plunging oil prices, and is not and much of the rest of the third world, progress depends on a a credible policy option for the Reagan administration...
...By limiting Marxist class strug- Gutierrez, now and then, expresses his approval of "real" gle to the rich versus the non-rich, Ratzinger conceded far too or "genuine" democracy, but he nowhere, to my knowledge, much to Marx and liberation theology...
...If all this seems rather foolish, that Is because it is, and we can't begin to understand why it is so foolish until we rip away the veil of illusion that has been draped over the figure of Karl Marx and has persuaded so many smart people that because he was a genius...
...Fortucourse...
...He has also done more than any The first sentence and the declarative part of the second other person to place the question of Christian socialism on the sentence seem to refer to the revolutionary struggle in Latin agenda of the Catholic church and the whole contemporary America, but the rest of the second sentence, the rationale for world...
...Quotes from Christians and Socialism, Orbis, 1975, p. 78...
...he was utterly destitute of common sense...
...frequency of dividends...
...From the beginning of instead of the capitalists' one-share-one-vote, elect the board time there has been struggle between the rich and the poor in of directors...
...It is all very thrilling and macho heaven...
...A $35 billion trade cut-off would have stitutions and governments in the world...
...Mexico is neither Cuba nor Nicaragua...
...believe that liberation theology needs to decide which aspects Let me pursue the point by reference to the founding conare important in Marxism...
...conjunction with other Latin American debtors...
...Far, far too ment, but it should be made...
...Remember the camel and the "reform" and "compromise" are not reassuring...
...It insists on a society in which, by appropriating More than any other person Gutierrez has been responsible the means of production, the masses appropriate their for yanking the attention of us comfortable, complacent Chris- own political management as well, and definitive freetians of the North and forcing us to focus on the misery of the dom, thereby occasioning the creation of a new social South, compelling us to consider to what extent we share in consciousness (pp...
...284 and 285, and we do not wish to have such an approach...
...that included Gutierrez and two other prominent liberation Actually, Gutierrez himself, in the last sentence of his theologians, Hugo Assman, a German priest who has worked 11 July 1986: 401 in Brazil and Costa Rica, and an Italian priest, Giulio Girardi.nineteenth century and murky theories about surplus value, The document nowhere mentions the peasants, even as sliding back and forth between a formula based on subsistence "farm laborers," but there are many references to "the pro- wages and another based on actual wages, theories that alletariat" and "the working class...
...The only question is whether default is downward debt spiral, and in any case, could make up the loss managed to benefit the bankers or the Mexican people...
...the latest of his remarkable books...
...But the real point is that the working ing a trade embargo and suspension of new credits...
...Once into politics, classes and the recognition of class struggle...
...His personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the history of Christian socialism, excerpts from which are included country" (Populorum Progressio, 30 and 31...
...What you do not have is some clear idea of service of the workers in the class struggle...
...I am jealous, `community of the faithful' and the (catholic) univer- envious of Karl Marx because he has won the affections of a lot sality of the church" [emphasis in the original...
...Not simply because it flies in the face of all Judeo- I N THE "final document" of the founding convention of Christian tradition, but even more because it flies in the face of Christians for Socialism, a statement that Gutierrez helped common sense and everyday experience...
...Of course, Marx did not live to' enjoy life in the Soviet Union or other Marxist countries where wages and division of labor exist very happily, or unhappily, without private property...
...It follows from this peculiarly intellectual bias that above onto the praxis of the poor...
...Althusser, the hard-line French Communist: To which I would respond: "But, comrades, you do have a Understood in this way, the unity of the church is peculiar political approach of your own to offer...
...Michael Harrington put it more succinctly when he reminded us that "any fool can nationalize...
...He conBitterly perhaps, but not very bitterly...
...The negative part followed in the subhead: "But Document also Sees New Forms of Slavery...
...debt is unpayable, as even De la Madrid cabinet members credit suspension, Mexico only stands to gain by halting the privately acknowledge...
...Commonweal: 404...
...As for a clean break from the debt tar baby...
...it means the transformation - to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate without violence possible...
...The Marxist doctrine, apparently shared by Gutierrez, is not One can understand why Gutierrez and most liberation that he is a class enemy if he belongs to the rich, but that he is a theologians are cynical about "bourgeois democracy" as pracclass enemy if he is an employer, because the employer- ticed in the United States, or, more to the point, practiced on employee relationship is of necessity a bad, alienating, enslav- our neighbors to the South...
...No kidding...
...because he had some valuable mainly to rebuke the peasants because they are "attached to insights about the pervasive power of the economic factor...
...I am thinking particularly, not just of the odd different countries - JCC...
...I don't ation by the state...
...of learned, eloquent, dedicated Christians whom I would like What could be clearer...
...Reform and needle's eye...
...realization that the process is all-embracing and one in Perhaps the most significant passage is -the following on character makes us comrades, uniting all those who are page 277, where Gutierrez quotes with clear approval Louis committed to the revolutionary struggle...
...Lest we think that Gutierrez may have with the overt or covert assistance of the United States of changed his mind since he wrote the book in 1971 or saw it America, leaving hunger and oppression precisely where they published by Orbis Books in 1973, consider a statement from were before...
...Marx probably never worked for a wage in his peasant whose actual "praxis" cries out for his own land and entire life, but two minutes of careful thought should have by no means wants to be submerged in some collective farm reminded him that the wage relationship is just one more owned and operated by the state, exchanging one landlord for power relationship among thousands, not as common or as another who is even more powerful and impersonal...
...51, 56, and 57...
...I must, on the my enemies and his friends my friends...
...This convention was composed largely of Latin Ameriprovides an analysis of the surrounding reality for Christians can priests, and the final document was written by a committee and non-Christians alike in the struggle for freedom...
...In truth, No, Marx did not merely exclude the rich from his secular they are of the essence of life...
...is that he dismissed the reality too quickly and lightly in his Then you must quickly remind yourself that if the coopera- eagerness to get at the Marxist doctrine behind the words tive is to survive, the board of directors must appoint a compe- "class struggle...
...And the cooperative must pay a regular wage to the it is, and more careful clarification should have been addressed workers, in addition to sharing any profits...
...65, 66, 98, and "The German Ideology," pp...
...This internationally renowned author seeks not to instruct but to awaken us to the gift of wisdom that lies deep within each of us...
...He suffered from Godwin's Disease...
...The frequent putdowns for very poor opinion of the rich...
...right of the peasant to own land, free from the fear of expropriGUTIERREZ: I would make the question more precise...
...You disappear if the church is to be "reconverted'"' to the have an approach...
...He writes, "It cannot be taken as the equivatent manager who has power to insist on performance by the lent of `severe social conflict,' in an empirical sense...
...This But then, Popper did not live in Latin America, waiting half transformation ought to be directed toward a radical a lifetime for an honest election, then see a man elected who change in the foundation of society, that is, the private had promised "reforms without violence" and watch him ownership of the means of production...
...world...
...embracing and one in character...
...Cardi- theologians...
...And mitment to it, but many more Christians, imprisoned in they can and frequently do work out a just relationship that is mental inertia and categories that are suffused with abused by neither side, no more and no less than any other bourgeois ideology, regard this process fearfully and power relationship is abused in this permanently imperfect insist on taking the impossible pathway of reformism world where live and work permanently imperfect human and modernization...
...ernment the effective direction of the nation's work, Finally, you should reflect on the significant fact that a giving it the right to direct all the functions of labor, cooperative, if it is a true cooperative and not a creature of the would be to give a few men a power compared to which state, is itself a form of private property and considerably that of the Asiatic despot is nothing, since their power more private than a corporation owned by stockholders who stops at the surface of society and does not regulate don't give a damn about the company beyond the size and economic life...
...With peasants, or to this confusion...
...It is sible for debts they neither contracted nor benefited from - in fact the United States' third-largest trading partner after especially when the creditors are the wealthiest financial inCanada and Japan...
...By making the state the universal In the process, you see, division of labor, another enslaving employer...
...long, repetitive, and abstract, it made one yearn for the day Another weakness of the first instruction was the false when seminaries will insist that degrees in theology will be impression that absolute pacifism is part of Catholic teaching, awarded only to those who have passed a Good Writing that violence in pursuit of justice is never justified...
...Otherwise, you understanding of social classes and the class struggle, should stay out of politics...
...This is true...
...Blending anecdote and meditation, psychological reflection and spiritual exercises, it offers unparalled spiritual guidance and interior growth...
...But let us ignore this and extract a shouldn't I be out there in the bush with the guerrillas, fighting few Marxist notions from his writing to consider whether, in to free the people from hunger and oppression...
...These fears classes of poor nations like Mexico should not be held responare exaggerated...
...For this to where you are going, other than toward the same beautiful happen," he asserts, "it would be necessary that the vision of freedom and justice that even the most pro-capitalist myth of the `Christian community' disappear, for it Christians profess...
...The notably nn...
...to write, we find this remarkable paragraph: For common sense and everyday experience have taught us The revolutionary process is in full swing in Latin that employers and employees do have important things in America...
...Indeed, to offer food or drink in without violence impossible, and it should have only one aim our day is a political action...
...would I have the right to complain very bitterly because those In chapter 10 of A Theology of Liberation there is a series of who did have the courage also had some crazy Marxist- beautiful reflections on the Gospel, particularly on the Parable Leninist ideas which they proceeded to implement once the of the Good Samaritan and the vision of the Last Judgment tyrant had been overthrown...
...now available in Image paperback editions-Fr...
...theologians of doing...
...from the earth...
...compromise are of the essence of genuine democracy...
...This is Gutierrez at his best...
...In 1976 a Methodist primarily agricultural and what the Latin American peasants, missionary in Peru named Dow Kirkpatrick interviewed or the vast majority anyway, want is a piece of land of their Gutierrez for the Christian Century: own...
...phenomenon, would also be done away with because, as Marx Jean Jaures, the great French non-Marxist socialist who was confidently assured us, "private property and division of labor are identical expressions...
...the ownership of land," a value that is "part and parcel of the because finally - give him credit - he was consumed with a dominant bourgeois ideology...
...great, burning hatred of injustice and knew how to communiThis document also rebukes "many segments of the pro- cate it to others in a flaming phrase, that therefore - therefore letariat" because "they have been led astray by a tradition of - he really knew the life of men and women working in the labor unionism that is economics-oriented...
...Ah, but workers...
...In this new book-and in his three earlier bestsellers...
...Liberation theology does not evalu- vention of Christians for Socialism at Santiago, Chile, in ate the Christian and non-Christian in Marxism...
...LET US focus on the question of Marxism, since that is where This is extraordinary, for Latin America's economy is Cardinal Ratzinger laid special stress...
...Many Christians have made a personal comconflict...
...124, 157, in would naturally be a temptation to believe that if one could The Marx-Engels Reader, ed...
...We Christians do not quotations cited above, but of pp...
...But they also have important things in common...
...de Mello uses his rare eloquence and insight to lead the reader from sense to sensitivity, from thought to feeling toward new levels of spiritual understanding...
...the economic, political, and 'social aspects of life, between This is a much better idea than ownership by the state workers and unjust employers, rich or poor, even between because it is real economic democracy, and the best short workers and just employers when disputing over conditions of definition of socialism is the extension of democratic process employment...
...Gutierrez points out that class struggle has been and the workers, or peasants, on the basis of one-person-one-vote, remains a historical reality...
...37-38...
...But in effect it justified the New York Times headline nately, this was corrected in the second instruction...
...WE COME now to the question of class struggle, an aspect of Of course, you could replace the individual employer or liberation theology that particularly disturbs Cardinal corporation with a workers' or peasants' cooperative, so that Ratzinger...
...His enemies are faithful," I cannot possibly disagree with him...
...economy, particularly in largest creditor, made $1 billion in 1985 profits...
...He insisted that very abusive, or subject to abuse...
...The De from its payments savings...
...He excluded all employers, rich or poor (excepting to call for "revolution, revolution," but after the revolution, only the state...
...And a second fact, they do provide "an analysis of the surrounding reality" question: "If I didn't have the courage to join the guerrillas, which might prove useful in "the struggle for freedom...
...Not so understandable was the failure to quote nal Joseph Ratzinger, the controversial prefect of the Vati- Marx, especially when Ratzinger, in the first instruction, made can Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued two such sweeping generalizations as this: "Atheism and the deinstructions that either explicitly or implicitly criticized libera- nial of the human person, his liberty and his rights, are at the tion theologians...
...Someone [April 6, 1986]: "Vatican Backs Struggle by Poor to End must have reminded Ratzinger that Paul VI, true to the teaching of Aquinas, had written in 1967 that "a revolutionary JOHN C. CORT, a pioneer member of the Catholic Worker movement, is uprising" could be justified "where there is manifest, longa co-editor of Religious Socialism, a publication of the Religion.& standing tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental Socialism Commission of the Democratic Socialists of America...
...Marx's "Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844," abuse of wage relationships was and is so common that there pp...
...He did not...
...Michael Novak recently published a book prevents the recognition of the division of society into with the title, Freedom with Justice...
...Mexican business leaders and government of- developed world in recent years in the form of excessively high ficials have warned direly that such a step would provoke interest rates, an overvalued dollar, deteriorating terms of crippling economic retaliation from the United States, includ- trade, and capital flight...
...Insofar as Cardinal Ratzinger, how- to see dedicated to a brand of socialism that is more unambiguever imperfectly, is saying that the Marxist myth of class ously democratic...
...because he could fill three unreadable volumes with statistics about the horrors of English capitalism in the Commonweal: 402 assassinated for his anti-war stand in 1914, had enough com- more likely take the form of share-cropping and profit-sharing, mon sense to see that...
...There is no question about that...
...because he could write so profoundly about Hegel and Feuerbach...
...In fact, any number of Latin American countries may have Commonweal: 400 qualified as such tyrannies...
...Matthew 25:31-46...
...evening, criticize after dinner, just as [we] have a mind, Let us concede that in the case of Marx in England in the without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic" nineteenth century, or Gutierrez in Peru in the twentieth, the (cf...
...It insists on theologians...
...a society in which private ownership of the means of All this being cheerfully, or sadly, admitted, one must also production is eliminated, because private ownership of admit that there is ground for criticizing liberation theology...
...No chance...
...wages and private property are identical" and that the Actually, the wage relationship can be, and often has been, only way the workers could ever enjoy "real human life" and abused by wage-earners, as in the case of powerful, shortrid themselves of alienation, estrangement, and "all the muck sighted unions that force employers to pay unjustly high of ages," was to make a revolution that would do away with wages, thereby forcing consumers to pay unjust prices, and private property and the wage relationship so that we could all sometimes forcing employers out of business and union mem"hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the bers into unemployment...
...either: (a) sell out to the rich and the military, or (b) if he meant And what is this radical change...
...You have just rightly considered by Althusser as a myth which must expressed it: down with reform and up with revolution...
...A more equitable, ing their overall exposure as they postpone the day of reckon- but riskier, option is simply to cancel the debt, preferably in ing...
...core of Marxist theory...
...Or at least they were contrary, disagree with Gutierrez...
...They are imposing the European abstrac- Take, for example, those absurdities about private property tions, or conclusions, of Karl Marx onto the Latin American and wage labor...
...It is the total elimination of business, be replaced by the military in behalf of the rich, often private ownership...
...Robert C. Tucker, Norton, only do away with it, injustice and alienation might perish 1972...
...farmers, whether the co-op is a marketing or producing opera- Marx and Gutierrez go further than the notion of class tion, regular income must be assured to the members, but will struggle as a historical reality - much further...
...wise...
...i ,V Seeing i With this statement Anthony de Mello explains the essence of ONE MINUTE WISDOM...
...the means of production allows a few to appropriate the And let us take the best of its representatives, Gustavo Gutier- fruits of the labor of many, and generates the division of rez, a Peruvian priest who in 1971 published what is still, society into classes, whereupon one class exploits regarded as its Magna Carta, A Theology of Liberation...
...EXAMINING LIBERATION THEOLOGY Christians & the class struggle JOHN C. CORT Injustice...
...After all, Jesus had a, explains precisely what he means...
...because he could turn out a good, readable history of the 1848 Revolution and the Paris Commune...
...cludes from the commandment to feed, clothe, and shelter Karl Popper, sitting safely somewhere in England, once Christ in the poor that there is a political obligation involved: gave this excellent advice to revolutionaries: "The use of Charity is today a "political charity," according to violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms the phrase of Pius XII...
...The conclusion is harsh, is incompatible with the peculiarly religious myth of the something like the harshness of a jealous lover...
...Citibank...
...He wrote: supplemented by substantial family holdings - private propDelivering men to the state, conferring upon the gov- erty...
...responsibility for that misery...
...As Fidel Castro noted at last summer's debt conference in Havana, reT HE ALTERNATIVE to this de facto default is a unilateral pudiating the regional public debt would help compensate for payment moratorium or flat-out debt annulment on the "illegitimate transfers" Latin America has made to the Mexico's part...
...One of the weaknesses of Ratzinger's instruction from the political to the economic sphere...
...Mexico's sharply negative effects for the U.S...
...to themselves the value of the work of others...
...above, will be published by Orbis Books in 1987...
Vol. 113 • July 1986 • No. 13
