Rehabilitating Marx

The Holy See has rehabilitated Karl Marx. In the Oct. 21 issue of L’Osservatore Romano, the official publication of the Catholic Church, there is an article calling on people to read the works of Marx to help answer questions raised by the current crisis.

This news is interesting but not exactly sensational. For some time already, the Catholic Church has been correcting its earlier mistakes by recognizing the contributions made by people whom it early considered anathema, such as Galileo, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde, so it was only a matter of time before church leaders revised their position on Marx.

Not long ago, Pope Benedict XVI, who represents the conservative wing of the Catholic hierarchy, publicly denounced Marx’s teachings. But as the entire world is suffering the consequences of a deep crisis in the liberal, capitalist model, it makes sense that the Catholic Church is taking a new look at Marx’s works.

It is well known that Marx was not a Catholic, and the Vatican never recognized his achievements as a great economist and

sociologist. But it is the political and revolutionary ideas contained in “Das Kapital” that have influenced tens of millions of Catholics — especially in South America.

“Catholic Marxism” — otherwise known as liberation theology — has long been a significant factor in the political life of many countries, from Brazil to Guatemala. And in Paraguay, former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo Mendez has even led a coalition of leftist forces to be elected president of the republic.

The popularity of liberation theology turns out to be a natural result of the overall political shift to the left across South America, where nearly one-third of the world’s Catholics live. The Vatican simply could not ignore this trend.

The interest in Marx is growing not only in South America. During the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were many attempts to remove Marx from Russian university courses as part of the de-Communization process, largely inspired by then-President Boris Yeltsin. But this process failed miserably as Marxist books and articles published by Western university professors began flowing back into Russia. For the generation that is too young to remember the Soviet Union and the official state ideology of Marxism-Leninism, Marxism has become a “forbidden fruit” of sorts.

The Vatican is displaying basic common sense in stating that a Marxist analysis can and should be used to find answers to questions raised by the worst modern economic crisis since the Great Depression. Russia’s liberal economists are the ones who stand out from the global trend when they blithely ignore the facts about the roots of the global crisis, acting as if the capitalist system is fundamentally sound.

By taking a conciliatory stance toward Marx, Vatican officials demonstrate far more flexibility in reacting to changing social and cultural conditions than do the officials in charge of Russia’s education system, who continue the anti-Communist crusade that they initiated back in the 1990s.

Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.