Christian Socialism:

...One searches equally in vain for any reference to Gandhi and the Gandhian movement which survived his death under the leadership of Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan...

...socialism embraces a whole nation, hence its familiar association with the concept of nationalization as state ownership...

...It seems to me that in shying away from the term "communism," Cort has missed a useful distinction between the early Christian situation and that of the nineteenth century...

...he is particularly good on the Anglican roots of the movement in Britain...

...But there is no mention of the communistic if not strictly socialistic tendencies among Russian sectarians like the Doukhobors, which even spread into the West, where the Doukhobors established a most interesting community of six thousand people in the mountains of British Columbia, which is not even mentioned...

...Christian Socialists from the nineteenth century on, trying to transform society and often to gain political influence in order to do so, were true socialists...

...Because of what seems to him an unthinking acceptance of Marxist-Leninist doctrines of the class struggle and the dictatorship of the party disguised as the proletariat, Cort deals harshly (with some justification) with "liberation theology," which he sees as having little in common with the real democratic and liberationist urges in Christian Socialism...

...Communism can apply to a village or even a group of like-minded sharers in a city...

...Indeed, it might seem out of place to talk of limitations in a book so broad in its scope and rich in its offerings...

...John Cort has set out to reveal the sources and the record of a socialism based on Christian teachings, and so far as Western Europe and North America are concerned he has researched thoroughly, and presents his material in considerable detail, discussing famous and less known French and German, English and American advocates of Christian socialism, both Catholic and Protestant...

...Political considerations, including the need to compromise with the trade unions, led the CCF to evolve from a movement largely under Christian inspiration into a mainline socialist party, the New Democratic Party...

...Early Christians, in so far as they advocated sharing among believers, were genuine communists without being socialists...

...Leo Tolstoy does not even appear in the index (though ironically Leon Trotsky does), and Nicholas Berdyaev is barely mentioned, though, to be fair, Cort is aware of this omission and apologizes for it in his Introduction...

...There are admirable accounts of figures who have long retreated into obscurity in the general history of socialism, like Philippe Buchez and Richard Ely, but whose place in the context of a religiously oriented political tradition remains important...

...The sources of Gandhism were as much Christian as Hindu, and the vision Gandhi and his followers projected, of a society based on village communities holding their land in common, is at least in part derived from the Christian tradition of social concern...

...But, essentially, it is the tradition of Western Christianity of which Cort is writing...

...The change involved a process of politicization, and very often it meant that the Christian content was diluted and elements of stat-ism and class conflict entered into what had originally been movements inspired by Christian ethics...

...With less free cooperation, stress is put on the need for individuals and groups to control their tools and places of work...

...Communism was originally conceived long before Marx and Engels laid claim to it in the Communist Manifesto, and originally it meant something far different from the rigid state apparatus, complete with secret police and Gulags, that we associate with modern Communist regimes...

...Yet for all its limitations, and even without Tolstoy and Gandhi and Godwin, Christian Socialism is a readable and formidably useful book, devoted as it is to seeking ways by which the great moral forces of Christianity can be given their proper role in shaping a just, equitable, and workable society...

...One now finds this view fairly common among Christian socialists...

...Unfortunately, Cort's tendency to accept the popular identification of "communism" with Marxism robs him of a useful distinction in tracing the meta-morphosis of early Christian communitarian tendencies into genuine socialism...

...Cort is almost sternly anti-Marxist, and though he brings Marx into his discussion, it is mainly to stress the more negative elements he derived from Judeo-Christian traditions...

...It really meant community of ownership, and could be on any scale, beginning with small intentional communities like that of the early disciples after Christ's death, and continuing in monastic orders and Utopian experiments which often actually presumed a withdrawal from society, which is a much broader concept than community...

...There is virtually nothing in his book about communistic or socialist tendencies in Eastern Christianity...

...two of its early leaders, J. S. Woodsworth and T. C. Douglas, were actually Protestant ministers...

...A good example has been the Canadian movement originally called the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), which Cort briefly touches on and which developed largely out of the Social Gospel movement...

...This party tends to see society in polar terms and to envisage a future in which the state will be in control of production and consumption...

...And, though Cort's Catholic loyalties are never less than evident, he treats the Protestant leaders and activists with remarkable understanding, so that within its limitations his history is an admirably balanced one...