By Michael Läwy
It is not always easy to fit the Vatican into the international political map: allied with Reagan in the fight against Sandinista Nicaragua, it condemned Bush's Gulf War; defender of human rights against dictatorships, it is trying to impose a ban on abortion in Poland, against the will of the majority, daring to compare abortion to the genocide of the Jews. While denouncing poverty and the exploitation of the Third World, it ceaselessly persecutes and punishes those such as the liberation theologists who take an effective stand at the side of the poor.
Overall, the pontificate of John Paul II represents an attempt at a "restoration", in terms of both doctrine and the system of power within the church. This is shown by his particular virulence on matters of sexual morality and in opposition to women's rights such as contraception, divorce or abortion. The line has been imposed by the systematic appointment, both in Europe (Salzburg, Cologne, Namur, Coire) and in Latin America (Recife), of ultra-conservative bishops, known for their opposition to any relaxation and unconditional supporters of the "magistracy of Rome", often in the face of opposition from the local clergy and congregation.
The Vatican is trying to reimpose the old principle of Roma locuta, causa finita ("Rome has spoken and the matter is closed"), and uses all its power to silence those, such as the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, who will not submit to this rule.
This has not prevented the Vatican from taking positions on specific social and economic questions that are critical in relation to the Western imperialist consensus.
The encyclical
It is a useful exercise, if one wants to see one's way clearly through the contradictions and ambiguities, to look more closely at John Paul II's most recent encyclical, Centesimus Annus, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the famous Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII.
It was greeted by the near unanimous chorus of praise from both left and right — one of the happy exceptions being Daniel Singer's article, "Papal polonaise" in the Nation of May 29, 1991, elements of whose analysis are used here.
The encyclical and its reception have strengthened the notion of the pope as a moral authority above existing blocs and systems. Indeed, celebrating the end of the "socialist" regimes and
of "Marxist atheism", John Paul II writes: "One cannot accept the idea that the defeat of 'real socialism', as it is called, should simply give way to the capitalist model of economic organisation".
To better understand this statement, let us recall the analysis of the sociology of religions developed by Max Weber. In his view, there exists a profound tension between the ethic of Catholicism and the reified, impersonal and anonymous functioning of capitalism, which leaves little room for the moralistic intervention of the church. The critique of liberal capitalism is an old tradition in Catholic thinking, from Thomas More to today.
New World Order
Faithful to pre-capitalist culture and values, the Vatican can afford a more realistic vision of the world in 1991 than that of the neo-liberal ideologues of George Bush's New World Order. Contrary to the high priests of the new religion of the market, Rome has understood that eastern Europe and the Third World find themselves on the dark side of the capitalist system.
A selective and one-sided reading of the document could even create the impression that the pope is opposed to capitalism, insofar as he considers "the struggle against an economic system understood as a method of assuring the absolute primacy of capital, of the ownership of the means of production and of the land over the liberty and dignity of work and man" legitimate.
The document not only condemns the arms race and the destruction of the natural environment, but also the inhuman exploitation of the Third World and its placing under a "quasi-servile yoke"; the decolonisation that leaves "decisive sectors of the economy in the hands of the big foreign firms"; "national security" regimes, which destroy liberty and personal values; and the external debt that is responsible for "the hunger and despair of entire populations".
The pope's irreverence goes so far as to denounce the "idolatry of the market", which ignores collective and qualitative needs and the important human requirements that escape its logic.
Finally, he refuses to "reduce human labour and humanity itself to the level of a commodity" and points out the existence of many countries where "the practices of crude capitalism are still in force, in a situation whose cruelty is in no way less than in the darkest moments of the first phase of industrialisation".
One could pick out many remarks of this kind. They will certainly, and with good reason, be used as welcome ammunition by Christians and trade unionists in Latin America and eastern Europe in their
fight against IMF policies, North American economic advisers and neo-liberal austerity programs bringing unemployment and poverty.
However, there is also the question of what alternative the pope proposes to this alienated civilisation, "oriented towards having, not being". One thing for sure is that the alternative is not to be socialism.
He denounces not only the totalitarian regimes and "really existing socialism", but the very idea of a socialist society based on the "rejection of private property". Unlike the liberation theologists, he also rejects the class struggle (since it excludes "reasonable compromise") and "an impossible compromise between Marxism and Christianity".
Third way?
It would seem at first glance therefore that the pope sees capitalism and socialism, liberalism and Marxism, as two sides of the same coin, and proposes a third way, that is, an economy and society based on "conviviality" and the search for the "common good".
However, an attentive reading of the document shows that it is not in fact a matter of a third way.
John Paul II, like his predecessor Leo XIII, the apostle of conciliation between capital and labour, proposes nothing more than an impossible "capitalism with a human face". That is to say, a capitalism without "cruelty", without excesses, "fitted into a firm judicial context", tempered by the intervention of the benevolent charity of the church.
There is thus a flagrant contradiction between the severity of the condemnation and feebleness of the proposed remedies.
This, of course, corresponds to the traditional logic of the church's social doctrine, which, while distinguishing itself from bourgeois liberalism by criticising the most outrageous inhumanities of the system, can conceive of no alternative other than a capitalism rendered more "charitable" by Christian morality.
The real social content of the encyclical Centesimus Annus should be understood in this light.
In the last analysis, it legitimates the market, the role of profit and private ownership of the means of production while shamefacedly proposing to call all this by a different name: "it would be more appropriate to talk about the 'enterprise economy' or the
'market economy' or the 'free economy'". As if a change of name — or the replacement of a liberal government by a Christian democratic one — changes the nature of the system and its logic of oppression, exploitation, alienation and exclusion.
It is thus no surprise that the "option for the poor", the watchword of Christians in Latin America and elsewhere who take the side of the poor in their struggle for their freedom, is for John Paul II nothing more than " a special form of emphasis in the practice of Christian charity".
Marxists can recognise brothers in arms in those Christians, such as Frei Betto and Leonardo Boff, who have chosen the camp of the exploited and the oppressed against capitalism and imperialism.
They should not, on the other hand, entertain any illusions whatsoever about the social doctrine of the church and the Roman encyclicals, whether from Leo XIII or John Paul II.
[From International Viewpoint.]