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February 26th, 2009
Happy birthday Communist Manifesto!
by Jeff Guhin

Yes, yes.  There are good Catholic reasons not to be communist.  Of course.  But you can’t deny that Marx was right about a lot of stuff in this.

The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

2 comments about “Happy birthday Communist Manifesto!”
Chris Terracino -- March 1st, 2009 at 2:29 am

I’d rather work for a rich capitalist who may be a Christian, or at least believes in God than a communist, which their religion, communism,(and maybe its yours too), denys God and religion as the “opiate of the masses”.

D -- March 1st, 2009 at 1:54 pm

Have a glance at Acts 2–one of the oldest church traditions seems to be communism. Even the sermon on the mount leans strongly in the direction of all goods being shared according to need (rather than private ownership). By the way, communism (in general) has nothing to do with atheism, even though it does have a materialist focus because of the injustices of ownership societies.

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