A Rebuttal of Dean Dettloff's "The Catholic Case for Communism" Part Three.

Want to make a better world? Read more Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens

This is the third in a series of blog entries rebutting a "Catholic" defense of communism authored by Dean Dettloff in the Jesuit magazine America on July 23, 2019 that downplays the crimes of communism. The first entry focused on the last part of his essay that was a whitewash of the Castro regime. The second entry explored the nature of communism and its death toll.

Dettloff misrepresents Biblical scripture in an effort to conflate it with Marxism.

“From each according to ability, to each according to need,” Marx summarizes in “Critique of the Gotha Program,” a near echo of Luke’s description of the early church in Acts 4:35 and 11:29. Perhaps it was Day, not her young communist neighbor, who misunderstood communism.

It is Charles Dickens that echoes Luke's description of the early Church in Acts 4:35 and 11:29 when it describes how owners voluntarily sold their property to help those in need.

34^j There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale,  

35and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need.

36^k Thus Joseph, also named by the apostles Barnabas (which is translated “son of encouragement”), a Levite, a Cypriot by birth, 

37sold a piece of property that he owned, then brought the money and put it at the feet of the apostles.

 Marxists would have seized the property belonging to the owners by force and then give it to those in need. In practice, if those who benefited from the confiscation and transferring of property were not sufficiently grateful then they too would run into trouble.

Reading Marxist theorists one does not find tales of businessmen, like Dickens's Ebeneezer Scrooge, converted from their "greed is good" perspective to one found in the Gospels, but instead Scrooge hung from a scaffold, and his property confiscated and given to the poor. This is a far cry from biblical teachings, but Charles Dickens offers a radically Christian perspective that is the opposite of communism in his description of the reformed Scrooge.

"He went to church and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness."

In practice Communism has proven far worse. Famine is a tool communists have traditionally used to remake societies.  The deadliest famines in the 20th century were not in Africa but in Europe (Ukraine) and China. Social science research has demonstrated that famines "happen only with some degree of human complicity."  Human decisions "determine whether a crisis deteriorates into a full-blown famine."

Millions starved to death under brutal famine imposed by Joseph Stalin

 According to Felix Wemheuer, professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne, in his book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union," during the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union." 

If communism tames the capitalist beast, as Dean Dettloff claims, then why is capitalism so savage and inhumane in Communist China?

Communist China today is a land of sweatshops, slave labor, child labor, workers not allowed to have an independent labor union , and generates pollution that violates international agreements it has signed.  It has all the worse characteristics of savage capitalism without the freedoms associated with it.

The late Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in his autobiography, Before Night Falls, observed: “The difference between the communist and capitalist systems is that, although both give you a kick in the ass, in the communist system you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you can scream."