Socialism presupposes as its end the dissolution of barriers between individuals, including those of the family and religion. For this reason, communism is always atheistic, because it, just as socialism, presupposes that the end of all men is to serve other men for the sake of man, not God.

Christian Communism: 

An Impossible Contradiction

by Daniel Arevalo 

In my daily read recently I came across an essay written by David Pederson, ”How (Not) to Understand Marx,” here on Ethika Politika. His core argument was that intellectuals and nonintellectuals alike in their criticism of communism and Marxism  fail to actually understand, first, Marx’s actual words, second, the quality of Marx’s writing, third, the “correct” way to understand Marx, and lastly, whether a Catholic can be a Marxist at all.

It is certainly commendable to attempt to get other scholars to approach an author without too heavy of a preconceived filter. However, in my own reading of Marx, I think it is easy to demonstrate that not only are all of Mr. Pederson’s arguments incorrect, but they also may be slightly naïve. While I must confess that he does seem better read in the secondary literature, I argue that Marx’s own words are clear enough to counter his central arguments.

First, I reject the idea that Marx has been misunderstood or taken out of the context from which he was writing or that his important ideas are not the ones being addressed (and by extension criticized). Mr. Pederson writes,

Whether Marx was “empirically wrong” on all of his core assumptions, I will leave to one side—not only because (a) that’s a contested point, (b) capitalism has developed in ways that Marx couldn’t foresee, and (c) I don’t know the relevant empirical details, but also mainly because it’s irrelevant to the most important insights in Marx’s thought.

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Read more: ethikapolitika.org