There are many forms of “socialism.”

Neither is the doomed-from-the-beginning Stalinist “socialism in one country” project, interested in only perpetuating the status quo at home (the parasitic rule of the Kremlin bureaucratic caste), and abroad (“peaceful co-existence” and “popular fronts”: NOT world revolution, it must be stressed), finally crushed in the vice of globalisation and by the refusal of US based capital to accept being cut off from the potential markets of a great portion of the globe be forever, as “rollback” triumphed over “containment” in Washington, and “capitulation” triumphed over “containment” in Moscow and Beijing.

And even if the old bureaucratic welfare statism could still somehow be revived (a truly utopian, i.e. unrealisable since lacking any concrete material, socio-economic basis for its realisation) on a global scale, as a veritable collection of Roosevelts rose to power simultaneously in every major power on earth, and self-sacrificially came together at a new Bretton Woods to organise not merely “the Western bloc” as before, but this time the whole world, with a new architecture of global finance, and reformed and strengthened global institutions, etc etc, it would still not be Marxism, and not socialism as understood by Marxism, which is nothing more and nothing less than the taking of political, social, and economic power, throughout the world by the global proletariat (now, as capital’s four hundred year odd war to the death against the peasantry enters its final phases, for the first time the majority of the world’s population), organised in the revolutionary international as the world party of social revolution, and carrying all other remaining classes oppressed by capital, not least the peasantry and the petit-bourgeoisie, in its wake. Anything less is neither Marxism nor socialism as understood by Marxism.

As metaphysics, as ultimate interpretation of reality, Catholicism beats Marxism hands down. But as politics, Catholicism all to frequently falls short, not least because when it thinks it is grappling with Marxism (whether from a “left” or a “right” perspective) it is often grappling with nothing of the sort, and frequently feels it has come out on top when it has rarely appreciated the sheer power and depth of Marxism at full blast, settling in stead with grappling with a host of pale imitations: lumbering grey Stalinist bureaucracies; hysterically voluntarist Maoists spouting sub-Taoist Little Red Book platitudes; apostate Pabloites incessantly trying to polish the image of both of the latter; smug social democrats deluding themselves forever that their little bureaucratic welfare state volksheimat has seen of the writhing dragon of capital forever, and that they, the petit-bourgeois radical avant-garde elite, always knowing better than the masses (who, drugged by “consumerism” are of course, incapable of ever taking action themselves), will run things forever; self-righteous ex-New Deal liberals, forever in fear of “white-trash” and anything south of Mason-Dixon, yet hiding on the coasts, cut off forever from the Mid West/rust belt base which gave them their power, now abandoned to industrial collapse and the tender mercies of survivalist ideologues like the Michigan militia; cheerleaders of always doomed but ever colourful Third World national liberation movements, safe in the knowledge that support for such brings radical chic while mostly poor and mostly dark skinned people do the actual fighting and dying a long way away, augmented by gun-fetishising Castroist-Guevarist guerillolators, gyrating in jungle focos before whose heroic bandito spontaneity the citadels of power are supposed to crumble over night while the helpless working class look on in rapt admiration; utterly venal union bureaucracies hollowed out into little more than dues-collecting shells, preaching “labour-management co-operation” & “protect US/Canadian/Mexican/Greman/Japanese etc etc jobs” right up until the death squads come to knock on the door and take them away; and last but not least the snakeoil purveyors of the perpetual childishness of identity politics who believe that language makes reality, and that to change words is to change the world: all these are eager targets, but they are not Marxism.

After many decades of supposed Catholic-Marxist “dialogue” or Catholic-Marxist “polemic”, I would wager that neither has ever really taken place. The towering spectres of Trotsky and permanent revolution remain shockingly absent from the discourse, and until the most consistently internationalist and democratically-centralist form of Christianity, and the most consistently internationalist and democratically-centralist form of Marxism are brought into a true and fruitful confrontation, then capital will go on its merry way, its inexorable dynamic and laws of motion driving humanity ever further to socio-economic impoverishment, moral debasement, cultural degradation, spiritual decay, militarist carnage and ecological collapse. A true Marxism can provide the tools for the analysis and understanding of capitalism, and the myriad ways in which it seeks to perpetuate itself, and the ways it can be overthrown, a true science of politics which the Church can put to use, the latter having never forgotten to its credit that capitalism is not simply the way things are, but is a particular thing, that has come into being, and can pass away, and that the sway of redeemed reason can extend to the socio-economic, as much as the natural-scientific, spheres. And a true Catholicism can guard a true Marxism against itself, and show that the choice to fight, to choose life and not death, to choose blessings and not curses, to choose socialism and revolution against barbarism and revolution, is put within us One beyond the world, and that we can only project God and Utopia into the sky because that One who is below as well as above has first projected us forth from the dust.

Your issue, then, is not with the government doing the work. You seem to care more about who is doing the work. Meanwhile, many go in need while we quibble over who should do the work.

granted I was generalising, and I’m sure that all the lefties here give as much as they can. My point is about the left in general especially the political leaders that are found worthy of support because of their socialist leanings.

Merely giving money is not praiseworthy

This is blatantly untrue. Merely giving money is praiseworthy provided it is done out of charity, however it is not sufficient. As I was clear in my post, personally feeding the poor is very important, something that socialism divorces the people from doing by providing for professional bureaucrats to do the “doling”.

God Bless,

Matt

It’s fine to extol the virtues of you and your fellow capitalists. But please do not presume to know what I or any those people you label as “lefties” do for the poor. Merely giving money is not praiseworthy. Let Cheney and Gore do that. Doing for the poor is the Catholic way. I expect you to know the difference.

God Bless,

Matt

we already do. It’s very clear by any measure that conservative “capitalist” leaning folks give far greater portions to charity (even excluding religious donations) than do socialist leaning folks.

I recall that in Al Gore’s first term he gave something like $400 to charity, whereas Cheney and his wife give millions (almost $7,000,000 in 2005).

What are all you lefties waiting for?

God Bless,

Matt

And if only we could get the capitalist leaning folks to do that.

I think we should stop paying (we wage slaves can only minimize withholdings) federal income taxes, and give the money to the poor (it’s deductible up to 50% of AGI, and the poor will make better use of it than the gov). The IRS can’t imprison 100 million of us. Can it?

I agree in principle. If only we could get the socialist leaning folks around here to recognize that.

God Bless,

Matt