This is an update of the authors' 4 June and 6 April 2009 columns comparing today's global crisis to the Great Depression. World industrial production, trade, and stock markets are now showing signs of recovery. Still – today's crisis remains dramatic by the standards of the Great Depression.
Editor’s note: The original Vox column by Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke shattered all Vox readership records (30,000 views in two days, over 100,000 in a week, now fast approaching 350,000). Here the authors provide updated charts, presenting monthly data up through June 2009 (or latest).
This is a sharp divergence from experience in the Great Depression, when the decline in industrial production continued fully for three years. The question now is whether final demand for this increased production will materialise or whether consumer spending, especially in the US, will remain weak, causing the increase in production to go into inventories, leading firms to cut back subsequently, and resulting in a double dip recession.
Figure 1. World industrial production, now vs then
Figure 2. World stock markets, now vs then
Figure 3. Volume of world trade, now vs then
Figure 5. Industrial output, four big Europeans, then and now
Figure 6. Industrial output, four non-Europeans, then and now
Figure 7. Industrial output, four small Europeans, then and now
Editor’s note: The 6 April 2009 Vox column by Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke shattered all Vox readership records, with 30,000 views in less than 48 hours and over 100,000 within the week. The authors will update the charts as new data emerges; this updated column is the first, presenting monthly data up to April 2009. (The updates and much more will eventually appear in a paper the authors are writing a paper for Economic Policy.)
New findings:
The facts for Chile, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Sweden are displayed below; note the rebound in Eastern Europe.
Updated Figure 1. World Industrial Output, Now vs Then (updated)
Updated Figure 2. World Stock Markets, Now vs Then (updated)
Updated Figure 3. The Volume of World Trade, Now vs Then (updated)
Updated Figure 4. Central Bank Discount Rates, Now vs Then (7 country average)
New Figure 5. Industrial output, four big Europeans, then and now
New Figure 6. Industrial output, four Non-Europeans, then and now.
New Figure 7: Industrial output, four small Europeans, then and now.
The parallels between the Great Depression of the 1930s and our current Great Recession have been widely remarked upon. Paul Krugman has compared the fall in US industrial production from its mid-1929 and late-2007 peaks, showing that it has been milder this time. On this basis he refers to the current situation, with characteristic black humour, as only “half a Great Depression.” The “Four Bad Bears” graph comparing the Dow in 1929-30 and S&P 500 in 2008-9 has similarly had wide circulation (Short 2009). It shows the US stock market since late 2007 falling just about as fast as in 1929-30.
This and most other commentary contrasting the two episodes compares America then and now. This, however, is a misleading picture. The Great Depression was a global phenomenon. Even if it originated, in some sense, in the US, it was transmitted internationally by trade flows, capital flows and commodity prices. That said, different countries were affected differently. The US is not representative of their experiences.
Our Great Recession is every bit as global, earlier hopes for decoupling in Asia and Europe notwithstanding. Increasingly there is awareness that events have taken an even uglier turn outside the US, with even larger falls in manufacturing production, exports and equity prices.
In fact, when we look globally, as in Figure 1, the decline in industrial production in the last nine months has been at least as severe as in the nine months following the 1929 peak. (All graphs in this column track behaviour after the peaks in world industrial production, which occurred in June 1929 and April 2008.) Here, then, is a first illustration of how the global picture provides a very different and, indeed, more disturbing perspective than the US case considered by Krugman, which as noted earlier shows a smaller decline in manufacturing production now than then.
Figure 1. World Industrial Output, Now vs Then
Source: Eichengreen and O’Rourke (2009) and IMF.
Similarly, while the fall in US stock market has tracked 1929, global stock markets are falling even faster now than in the Great Depression (Figure 2). Again this is contrary to the impression left by those who, basing their comparison on the US market alone, suggest that the current crash is no more serious than that of 1929-30.
Figure 2. World Stock Markets, Now vs Then
Source: Global Financial Database.
Another area where we are “surpassing” our forbearers is in destroying trade. World trade is falling much faster now than in 1929-30 (Figure 3). This is highly alarming given the prominence attached in the historical literature to trade destruction as a factor compounding the Great Depression.
Figure 3. The Volume of World Trade, Now vs Then
Sources: League of Nations Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, http://www.cpb.nl/eng/research/sector2/data/trademonitor.html
To sum up, globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression, whether the metric is industrial production, exports or equity valuations. Focusing on the US causes one to minimise this alarming fact. The “Great Recession” label may turn out to be too optimistic. This is a Depression-sized event.
That said, we are only one year into the current crisis, whereas after 1929 the world economy continued to shrink for three successive years. What matters now is that policy makers arrest the decline. We therefore turn to the policy response.
Figure 4 shows a GDP-weighted average of central bank discount rates for 7 countries. As can be seen, in both crises there was a lag of five or six months before discount rates responded to the passing of the peak, although in the present crisis rates have been cut more rapidly and from a lower level. There is more at work here than simply the difference between George Harrison and Ben Bernanke. The central bank response has differed globally.
Figure 4. Central Bank Discount Rates, Now vs Then (7 country average)
Source: Bernanke and Mihov (2000); Bank of England, ECB, Bank of Japan, St. Louis Fed, National Bank of Poland, Sveriges Riksbank.
Figure 5 shows money supply for a GDP-weighted average of 19 countries accounting for more than half of world GDP in 2004. Clearly, monetary expansion was more rapid in the run-up to the 2008 crisis than during 1925-29, which is a reminder that the stage-setting events were not the same in the two cases. Moreover, the global money supply continued to grow rapidly in 2008, unlike in 1929 when it levelled off and then underwent a catastrophic decline.
Figure 5. Money Supplies, 19 Countries, Now vs Then
Source: Bordo et al. (2001), IMF International Financial Statistics, OECD Monthly Economic Indicators.
Figure 6 is the analogous picture for fiscal policy, in this case for 24 countries. The interwar measure is the fiscal surplus as a percentage of GDP. The current data include the IMF’s World Economic Outlook Update forecasts for 2009 and 2010. As can be seen, fiscal deficits expanded after 1929 but only modestly. Clearly, willingness to run deficits today is considerably greater.
Figure 6. Government Budget Surpluses, Now vs Then
Source: Bordo et al. (2001), IMF World Economic Outlook, January 2009.
To summarise: the world is currently undergoing an economic shock every bit as big as the Great Depression shock of 1929-30. Looking just at the US leads one to overlook how alarming the current situation is even in comparison with 1929-30.
The good news, of course, is that the policy response is very different. The question now is whether that policy response will work. For the answer, stay tuned for our next column.
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From: voxeu.org Sept. 1, 2009
By: Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke
The outcome of the health care reform legislation in the House demonstrates that while the Republicans don't have the votes to stop it, the Catholic Church has the votes to pass it.
Could the same thing happen in the Senate?
On Nov. 7, Catholic lobbyists working for the church's bishops finalized a deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. An anti-abortion amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak, a Catholic Democrat, was offered and passed. The bishops then came down officially in favor of a bureaucratic plan that could spell the end to freedom of choice in health care.
The turn of events once again demonstrates the left-wing drift of the Catholic Church. But the bishops' role in passing socialized medicine is not the only evidence of such a turn. They poured more than $7.3 million of parishioners' money through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) into the corrupt left-wing organization ACORN before negative publicity forced suspension of the funding.
Government-guaranteed "rights," in the view of the Catholic bishops, don't stop with health care. The papal "Peace on Earth" encyclical says that man has a "right" to "food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest and, finally, the necessary social services."
This is a blueprint for a socialist state.
Beyond religion, there is a practical reality. The Catholic Church operates 600 Catholic hospitals. A national health care plan is a means by which some of the costs could be dumped on taxpayers.
Another factor is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which recently announced a major agreement with the Catholic bishops to make it easier for workers in Catholic hospitals to join unions. These employees would normally be entitled to employer-paid health insurance. But under the national health care bill, they could be transferred to a government plan offered under a health insurance "exchange."
Since it was reported in the press that Pelosi, a Catholic Democrat, sought approval from the Vatican before the critical House vote, it is important to note that L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, published a shocking article by Professor Georg Sans that praised the Marxist theory of alienation under capitalism.
The article said that the church "must be grateful" to Marx for explaining the concept of "alienated labor" and "surplus value."
So-called "surplus value," which is said to amount to exploitation of workers under capitalism, justifies the confiscation of private property for the "common good" and its ultimate abolition.
The notion of surplus value is supposed to reflect the amount of output that exceeds the cost of the workers to produce a commodity. By definition under Marxism, this "surplus value," the source of what is commonly called profit, constitutes exploitation of the workers.
However, as Thomas Sowell points out in his book "Marxism," the analysis ignores the value produced by the capitalists who exercised private property rights in creating the means of production and employing the workers in the first place.
Hence, the Marxist concept of surplus value, Sowell argues, is "plainly arbitrary and unsupported."
Conservative Catholics are fighting the socialist tendencies in their church. In Battle Creek, Mich., for example, they have been exposing a group called JONAH, standing for Joint Religious Organizing Network for Action and Hope. An affiliate of the Gamaliel Foundation, which originally sponsored the work of "community organizer" Barack Obama in Chicago, it works to increase government involvement in the economy to benefit selected minority groups.
Like ACORN, the Gamaliel Foundation has been funded by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. Unlike ACORN, CCHD money continues to flow to Gamaliel. The bishops call this "social justice."
Curiously, in this mad rush for socialism, some Catholics find themselves in bed with George Soros, an admitted atheist. A review of the records of his Open Society Institute finds that a group calling itself Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good received $200,000 from his foundation over the last several years.
It lobbies for national health care.
Soros money has also gone into the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, an organization established by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops back in 1988. It has received at least $530,000 from the Open Society Institute.
The two issues merge in the fact that the Catholic bishops are demanding that national health care legislation cover illegal aliens. Their Nov. 6 letter to Congress said they "support access for immigrants to the health-insurance exchange, regardless of legal status."
A popular and telegenic priest, Jonathan Morris, who is a Fox News analyst, told Sean Hannity that the Catholic bishops support "a universal right to have access to basic health care" but not "socialized medicine."
In fact, a 1993 bishops' statement urged "concerted action by federal and other levels of government" on the issue and declared that government "has an essential role to play in assuring that the rights of all people to adequate health care are respected."
Father Morris seemed unfamiliar with the teaching of his own church. But if socialized medicine comes to the United States, the Catholic Church will bear much of the responsibility.
Cliff Kincaid is President of America's Survival Inc. (www.usasurvival.org)
From: pittsburghlive.com Nov. 22, 2009
By: Cliff Kincaid
WASHINGTON - Catholic bishops have emerged as a formidable force in the health care overhaul fight, using their clout with millions of Catholics and working behind the scenes in Congress to get strong abortion restrictions into the House bill.
They don't spend a dime on what is legally defined as lobbying, but lawmakers and insiders recognize that the bishops' voices matter — and they move votes. Representatives for the bishops were in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Capitol suite negotiating with top officials last Friday evening as they reached final terms of the agreement. Earlier in the day, Pelosi, a Catholic and an abortion rights supporter, had been on the phone to Rome with Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, Washington's former archbishop, on the subject.
It wasn't the first time a high-ranking Catholic had weighed in with a key player on writing strict abortion curbs into the health measure. Boston's Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley personally appealed to President Barack Obama about it near the church altar at the early September funeral for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. Bishops quietly called their congressmen and senators to weigh in.
"The Catholic Church used their power — their clout, if you will — to influence this issue. They had to. It's a basic teaching of the religion," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., a leading abortion foe and architect of the health measure's restrictions.
It was Stupak who told Pelosi last Friday that if she wanted a deal on the health bill, she'd be well advised to invite the bishops' staff, who were already in his office, to her table. "I said, 'Well, they're here, and they're one of the key groups you want to have on your side, so why don't we just bring them in and work this out," Stupak said.
Pelosi did, and the result was a final measure that — much to the outrage of abortion rights supporters — bars a new government-run insurance plan from covering abortions, except in cases or rape, incest or the life of the mother being in danger, and prohibits any health plan that receives federal subsidies in a new insurance marketplace from offering abortion coverage. If women wanted to purchase abortion coverage through such plans, they'd have to buy it separately, as a so-called rider on their insurance policies.
The outcome has put Obama and Democratic leaders — already struggling for consensus on the complex and politically tricky health measure — in a tough spot. Democratic abortion foes in the Senate vow they won't support health legislation that omits the strict restrictions approved by the House, while abortion rights champions say they can't possibly vote for a bill that contains them.
Obama suggested Monday that he wants to strike a balance that doesn't allow backdoor federal funding of abortions but preserves women's insurance choices. For now, however, no such middle ground has been identified, and the bishops have served their notice that they will be a player — perhaps the dominant one — in the final outcome.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the church's Washington-based advocacy organization, which is staffed by more than 350 lay people, derives its power in large part from the sheer number of Catholics in this country — 68 million — but also from the special moral and religious standing of its members. Many of them are in regular contact with lawmakers, weighing in on issues from immigration policy to benefits for low-income people.
The group distributed fliers to every parish in the nation asking people to pray for abortion restrictions and to call their congressmen and senators asking them to "fix these bills with pro-life amendments."
And in recent days, the conference staff got elbow-deep in the legislative machinations on the health measure, even having bishops intervene with Republicans — who were loath to help Democrats pass their bill — to make sure they supported the abortion provisions.
Kathy Saile of the conference said Democratic leaders were willing to listen to the group because it has been in favor of Democrats' broader push for a health overhaul.
"We stayed in the conversation until the end, because the bishops have always been adamant about the need for genuine health care reform and want to see health care reform happen," Saile said.
Another factor that undoubtedly helped: Democrats are keenly aware of the power of Catholic voters, more than 50 percent of whom embraced Obama in the 2008 election. That was a substantial swing after Catholics had eschewed the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who is Catholic.
Said Saile, "This was a lot of members of Congress listening to their constituents."
The outcome left abortion-rights supporters, who couldn't muster enough votes in the House to head off Catholic abortion foes' intervention, fuming.
The bishops "essentially got signoff. They dictated this, and it's totally inappropriate — it's blatant interference between church and state," said Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority. "The women's movement and the pro-choice forces feel like they were had."
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a leading liberal, suggested Tuesday that the IRS should investigate the conference's tax-exempt status, given its intense lobbying on the health measure.
And Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., a prominent abortion rights supporter who has gathered the signatures of more than 40 representatives who refuse to back a health bill that contains the restrictions, said the bishops had been allowed to overstep their bounds.
"No one group should get to dictate the outcome of legislation in Congress," DeGette said. "Every group should be listened to, but I don't think one group should be given veto authority over what we do."
From: foxnews.com Nov. 11, 2009
The shocking turn of events once again demonstrates the extreme left-wing drift of the Catholic Church.
The AARP and American Medical Association supported H.R. 3692, the Affordable Health Care for America Act of 2009, but a careful analysis of the media coverage demonstrates that it was the U.S. Catholic Church that provided the winning margin. Yet, the liberal media are failing to raise the issue of the alleged separation of church and state.
Contrary to some media reports, the U.S. Catholics Bishops never opposed a national health care scheme. In fact, their main objection was to a provision for federal funding of abortion. Once that provision was eliminated, the Catholic Bishops embraced the bill.
On Saturday, after Catholic lobbyists had finalized a deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the most prominent Catholic in the U.S. Government, the Politico reported that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had "delivered a critical endorsement" to Pelosi "by signing off on late-night agreement to grant a vote on an amendment barring insurance companies that participate in the exchange from covering abortions." The anti-abortion amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak, a Catholic Democrat, passed. Hence, the Bishops are now officially in favor of a bureaucratic plan that could spell the end to freedom of choice in health care and financially bankrupt the U.S.
"A half dozen lobbyists for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops joined negotiators in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office to come to terms," reported the Christian Science Monitor.
The Hill newspaper reported that Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) had been trying to broker a deal and appealed to the Catholic Bishops. "I would like the [U.S. Conference of Catholic] Bishops, who as I understand it want a bill, to help us work out a plan where we don't have winners and losers," Waxman was quoted as saying. "Because the losers will make us lose the bill and the winners won't have won anything."
NBC's Doug Adams reported that the Catholic Bishops were "lobbying hard."
The shocking turn of events once again demonstrates the extreme left-wing drift of the Catholic Church, which is the nation's largest religious denomination with 67 million members and run by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. But their role in passing Pelosicare is not the only evidence of such a turn. The Bishops poured more than $7.3 million of parishioners' money into the corrupt left-wing organization ACORN over the last decade before publicity over the organization's scandals forced suspension of the funding.
The Bishops were in favor of the health care plan, as long as abortion funding was deleted. In fact, as we noted in an October AIM Report, "On domestic matters, it is frequently reported that the Roman Catholic Bishops in the U.S. oppose the Obama health care plan. In fact, the bishops believe that 'health care is a basic human right,' which is the premise of the Obama plan and it is driving the campaign to have the federal government take over the health care sector. The Bishops disagree with Obama on tax-funding of abortion, but on other matters-such as health care for immigrants and the poor-the Bishops are to the left of the plans introduced by Congressional Democrats."
Blogger Steven Waldman of Beliefnet.com made the critical point that while most pro-life groups were either opposed to Democratic-style universal health care plans or neutral, "The Catholic Bishops are the only major pro-life group that wants health care reform."
But why? In addition to a socialist philosophy about the role of government, the Catholic Church operates 600 Catholic Hospitals, many of which serve legal and illegal immigrants. A national health care plan is a means by which these costs could be dumped on taxpayers.
Another factor could be the influence of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which recently announced a major agreement with the Catholic Bishops to make it easier for workers in Catholic hospitals to join unions. These hospitals have 525,193 full-time employees and 233,934 part-time workers who would normally be entitled to employer-paid health insurance. But under Pelosicare they could be transferred to a government plan offered under a so-called "health insurance exchange." Once again, taxpayers would be stuck with the bill.
"Health reform will bring the U.S. closer to a true, coordinated health care system. We need and deserve a solid health care infrastructure that serves everyone and promotes the common good," says the Catholic Health Association.
In addition to supporting "provisions in the legislation that will make health care more affordable for low-income people and the uninsured," a November 7 Bishops' letter to Congress cautioned against watering down provisions in the bill covering immigrants. It said, "We remain deeply concerned that immigrants be treated fairly and not lose the health care coverage that [they] have now."
The Bishops are so radical on health care reform that in a November 6 letter to Congress they endorsed government health care for illegal aliens. The letter said they "support access for immigrants to the health-insurance exchange, regardless of legal status, and support removal of the five-year ban on legal immigrants accessing Medicaid and other federal health-care programs..." (emphasis added).
Kathy Saile, director of domestic social development with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying that illegal aliens should be included in any health care plan because health care is "a basic right" and "you can't start cutting people out."
From: aim.org Nov. 8, 2009
The group Catholic Democrats has hailed passage of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act of 2009, and notes that the only House Republican voting for it, Representative Joseph Cao of Louisiana, is a Catholic and former Jesuit seminarian. "The Catholic Church has been at the forefront of advocating for health care as a right for decades, including pastoral letters issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in 1981 and 1993," the group notes.
The evidence indicates that the Bishops-and the Vatican itself-are calling the shots behind the scene. In fact, as many media organizations are now reporting, they engineered the "compromise" that deleted abortion funding so the bill could pass the House. The Los Angeles Times reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic, not only "conferred with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to be sure the new restrictions were acceptable" but "consulted by telephone with a cardinal in Rome."
CNN reported that, as a deal was being made between Pelosi and Catholic lobbyists, "Several Democrats, including Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pennsylvania, said they are in touch with their Catholic Bishops back home. Altmire said he must have the approval of his bishop in Pittsburgh before he can vote yes."
Where is the media outrage over "the separation of church and state?" In this case, there is direct evidence of a foreign entity, the Vatican, actually passing judgment on legislation and, in effect, delivering votes for it.
Few in the media, on the left or right, want to raise the issue, apparently fearful of being labeled "anti-Catholic."
But the outcome of the legislation in the House demonstrates that while the Republicans don't have the votes to stop it, the Vatican has the votes to pass it. Could the same thing happen in the U.S. Senate?
It is time for the major media to investigate how the officials of a major religious denomination, with its headquarters in Rome, are affecting the outcome of major pieces of legislation in the Congress of the United States.
This is a matter of great importance because government-guaranteed "rights," in the Vatican's view, don't stop with health care. Man, the papal "Peace on Earth" document said, "has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of ill health; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his own he is deprived of the means of livelihood."
As defined by the Catholic Bishops, this is a blueprint for a socialist state.
The encyclical said that individuals have the right to private ownership of property but that this right "entails a social obligation as well."
In this context, in a major story largely ignored by the major U.S. media, a London newspaper recently noted that L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, published an October 21 article by Georg Sans that praised the Marxist theory of alienation under capitalism. The article, published in Italian, said that the church "must be grateful" to Marx for explaining the concept of "alienated labor" and "surplus value." Sans also said that "a large part of humanity" remains alienated.
The article was reprinted by an Italian communist website, complete with an image of Karl Marx flashing a "V" for victory sign.
So-called "surplus value," which is said to amount to exploitation of workers under capitalism, is one of the major concepts of Marxism. It justifies the hatred of and violence against private property owners-the capitalists. "The doctrine of surplus value is the cornerstone of Marx's economic theory," stated V.I. Lenin.
Surplus value may sound esoteric but the concept is absolutely necessary in understanding the appeal of Marxism and the basis for revolutionary activity. The notion of surplus value is supposed to reflect the amount of output that exceeds the cost of the workers to produce a commodity. By definition under Marxism, this "surplus value," the source of what is commonly called profit, constitutes exploitation of the workers. It is the basis for government control of the economy and elimination of the property owners once the workers supposedly take charge.
The Vatican newspaper article is not a complete embrace of all aspects of Marxism. Sans, who teaches the History of Contemporary Philosophy at the Università Gregoriana, the first Jesuit university, is also critical of Marx's materialism and how Marxism has been applied in practice by Communist parties. He calls this "ideological abuse" and says that an understanding of mankind has to take into account man's spiritual nature. Sans says that, "The history of Marxism has taught us, however, that all attempts to introduce communism by force ended up in an injustice and an even greater misery."
On the other hand, the article still puts the Vatican newspaper on the side of the Marxist philosophy of state control in the name of liberating the workers. "We must be grateful to the philosopher for the idea that man should be considered in light of the mode of production and form of economic management which predominate in society," he writes.
However, as Thomas Sowell points out in his book, Marxism, the Marxist analysis ignores the value produced by the capitalists who exercised private property rights in creating the means of production and employing the workers in the first place. Hence, the Marxist concept of surplus value, Sowell argues, is "Plainly arbitrary and unsupported." It is essential to Marxist theory because the abolition of private property is a major plank in the communist platform.
The Sans article doesn't just embrace the Marxist theory of alienation from the economy. On the matter of the natural environment, Sans expands this dubious theory to include another "aspect of alienation" which he said involves "man against nature." Sans condemned the "overexploitation of natural resources and environmental destruction" that are said to characterize industrial societies.
Sounding like Al Gore, he explained, "No need to be materialistic to recognize that we must establish a degree of harmony between man and his natural environment. It is not simply to relate to a living space or obtaining food, but take account of the man who shall be a unity of body and spirit." He goes on to condemn the "overexploitation of natural resources and environmental destruction" that are said to result from such alienation.
As noted by the London Times, "Professor Sans's article was first published in La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit paper, which is vetted in advance by the Vatican Secretariat of State. The decision to republish it in the Vatican newspaper gives it added papal endorsement."
Kevin Clarke wrote a blog posting on the site of America magazine, the national Catholic Jesuit weekly, which declared, somewhat jokingly, "We're all Marxists now!"
Jokes aside, the Vatican newspaper article is embarrassing to many Catholics, for the obvious reason that it exposes Marxist sympathies deep within the Vatican at a time when many Americans, including Catholics, are resisting the Marxist drive for total government control in the U.S. Embarrassment explains why so many conservative Catholic commentators have decided to ignore this Vatican embrace of the key component of revolutionary Marxism.
To make matters worse, the astute "Reading the Maps" blog pointed out that "The explanation for the appearance of Sans' article may lie in an extraordinary but little-noticed Encyclical which the Pope issued in 2007 called Spe Salvi, or In Hope We Were Saved. Spe Salvi includes a long and surprisingly sophisticated assessment not only of the thought of Marx, but of the whole history of Western thought since the Enlightenment."
The headline over the blog carried the headline, "Is the Pope a Marxist?"
This papal Encyclical explained that the "dreadful living conditions" described by Friedrich Engels, the co-author of the communist manifesto, gave rise to the Marxist view that "the time had come for a new, proletarian revolution," in which "progress could not simply continue in small, linear steps" and that "A revolutionary leap was needed."
The encyclical explained that "Karl Marx took up the rallying call, and applied his incisive language and intellect to the task of launching this major new and, as he thought, definitive step in history towards salvation-towards what Kant had described as the 'Kingdom of God.'"
It went on, "With great precision, albeit with a certain one-sided bias, Marx described the situation of his time, and with great analytical skill he spelled out the paths leading to revolution-and not only theoretically: by means of the Communist Party that came into being from the Communist Manifesto of 1848, he set it in motion. His promise, owing to the acuteness of his analysis and his clear indication of the means for radical change, was and still remains an endless source of fascination. Real revolution followed, in the most radical way in Russia."
However, the Pope also said that Marx's "fundamental" error was that "he did not say how matters should proceed thereafter" and that "He simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be realized." The Pope noted that Marxism did not lead to a "perfect world" but left behind "a trail of appalling destruction," which is a major understatement. Professor Paul Kengor notes that the seminal Harvard University Press work, The Black Book of Communism, was probably conservative when estimating only 100 million deaths at the hands of communist governments.
On another level, the Pope argued that the "error" of Marx was his materialistic philosophy, which ignores man's freedom and assumed that "once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right."
However, on economic matters, as we have seen in the health care debate, the U.S. Catholic Bishops have embraced Democratic-style universal health care, declaring on the basis of a papal encyclical that health care is a right that should be guaranteed by government.
On the global level, Pope Benedict spoke forcefully in his own "Charity in Truth" encyclical, declaring that we need "a worldwide redistribution of energy resources," more foreign aid from rich to poor nations, and a "world political authority" with "teeth" working through the United Nations to bring this about.
The "teeth" could include the global bank tax that was discussed at the recent meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bankers.
From: rightsidenews.com Nov. 9, 2009
