Communism and the Church

In December we looked at the impact of the scientific revolution on the Church. This month we reflect on a struggle between Christianity and two powerful ideologies: capitalism and communism.

The 19th century German thinker Karl Marx applied the principles of scientific observation and scientific analysis to the analysis of human society. He saw a parallel between the laws of natural science and what he considered to be the laws that govern human development.

The Marxist theory of social development is called historical materialism. In this regard Marx saw society developing in stages. The lowest stage was what he called “primitive communalism” where social organisation was based on family relations.

The next stage was slave-owning societies in which more advanced implements such as wooden ploughs and sickles were used. This was followed by feudalism where society was arranged in larger units under a feudal chief.

The next stage was capitalism where land, factories and other means of production were owned, not by chiefs but by capitalists. In this stage Marx saw a fierce class struggle between workers and capitalists, with the workers fighting to take control of society from the capitalists to establish socialism.

Under socialism poverty and injustice would be wiped out. Socialism would be followed by the highest stage of human development called communism. This system would establish a perfect society without any oppression or poverty. The guiding maxim would be “From each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs”.

Marx was writing at a time when capitalism was at an advanced stage in Europe. Workers, including very young children, were being exploited in European factories; the discovery of America and other lands led to a huge and cruel slave trade with thousands of Africans being captured by force and shipped to the Americas. The colonisation of Africa and other lands was all part of European capitalist expansion.

Marx saw the workers’ struggle to establish socialism as the way to end all these and other evils of capitalism. Like other philosophers of the time, Marx was an atheist who saw the Church as an instrument of capitalism that blinded the people to their state of oppression. He called religion “the opium of the masses”.

While capitalism clearly violated many of the principles of Christianity, Marxism openly rejected God and declared that human happiness lay not in another world called heaven, but in the here and now—in changing the economic system in favour of the oppressed peoples of the world. Hence the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!”

For many oppressed peoples of the world, communism pointed the way to freedom. The first major victory for communism was the establishment of the Soviet Union in Russia in 1917. Subsequently China and most of Eastern Europe fell under communist rule, and Germany was divided into two after the Second World War, with East Germany being ruled by communists.

In Africa and elsewhere liberation movements sought help from communist countries. By the late 1970s it was estimated that a third of the world was under communism or ruled by governments of a communist orientation. The world was divided between the Eastern bloc, the capitalist West and Non-Alligned countries of the South. Unfortunately for communism, those countries that embraced the ideology tended to be oppressive and intolerant of opposing ideologies; and imposing the idea of a life without God was unacceptable to many.

Communism has suffered serious reversals since the 1980s, beginning with events which are associated with the visit of Pope John Paul II to his native land, Poland. In 1989 Poland broke away from communist rule when Lech Walesa’s trade union, Solidarity, won the elections. The Berlin Wall which had divided East Germany from West Germany since 1961came crumbling down in 1989.

On December 1, 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit the Vatican—an indication of his realisation of the importance of the Church in world affairs.