Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

subject to Soviet imperialism. Through the rapid alternation of brutal threat and ‘soft’ ingratiation,
a state of perplexity and uncertainty was supposed to be created among the nations of
the free world. As in every error, a certain grain of truth lies in the Marxist pars-pro-toto thesis.
Because man is by essence ordered to the interpersonal other and to the community, he is
responsive to the social in both good and evil, which has been discussed for centuries in the
traditional theology under the headings ‘good example’, ‘bad example’, ‘good company’,
‘bad company’, ‘this world’ (l Jn 2:l5), and so on. Yet what are ultimately determinative in
world history are not economic processes, but spiritual decisions.
b) The Communist Society of the Future.
Even more disputable than the doctrine of the determination of the whole of human history by
production relations is the Marxist thesis of the economic order of the communist society of
the future. In the Marxist pseudo-eschatology, world history forms the period of suffering,
unredeemed man until the victory of communism. The ‘Fall’, which lies in the introduction of
private property, has led, according to Marx, to the exploitation of man by man in the three
historically successive forms of slavery, villeinage, and the capitalist wage system. The whole
of world history thus far has been a history of class struggles. But redemption is imminent
since capitalism is the „final antagonistic“ system of exploitation: „With this societal form the
prehistory of human society comes to a close.“ 30 The more technology and industry developed
in a country, the more „the mass of misery, of oppression, of servitude, of degeneration, of
exploitation, but also the indignation...of the working class“ necessarily grew. The „capitalistic
hull“ must be „broken.“ According to this Marxian prophecy, the dialectical leap from
capitalism to Marxist socialism should have first taken place in the highly developed industrial
states, England, the United States, and Germany. In reality, however, Marxism came to
power in the agrarian countries, Russia and China, though not through dialectics, but through
the force of arms. The „redeemer“ who will lead humanity into the socialist paradise is the
proletariat, to whom Marx assigns a pseudo-Christian salvific mission. He presents us with
the proletariat as the secularized „servant of God“ (Is 53:l-l2) and Ecce-Homo: a class with
„radical chains“ that possesses „a universal character through its universal sufferings,“ against
whom „no particular injustice, but injustice purely and simply“ has been committed, a class
that „cannot emancipate itself“ without „emancipating“ all other strata of society, a class that
„represents the full loss of man and that can thus recover itself only through the recovery of
man.“ 31
The communist paradise does not, of course, begin immediately after the overthrow of capitalism.
Rather, the development takes place in two stages.
First there follows an era that stands in a strange twilight: „Between the capitalist and communist
society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the
other. To this there also corresponds a political transitional period, the government of which
can be no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.“ 32 This „interim socialist
stage“ prior to the communist paradise exhibits two peculiarities:
First, it is striking that the elimination of the private ownership of the means of production has
led to a total bureaucratic interventionism (a centrally administered economy): „The transformation
of the whole state economic mechanism into a single great machine, into an economic
organism, that works in such a way that hundreds of millions of people can be steered by a
single plan is the gigantic organizational task that has devolved upon us.“ 33 Nevertheless, just
as in capitalism, everyone receives his or her wage according to his or her work, so that „the
one receives more than the other in fact,“ an abuse that is presented by Marx as „unavoidable“
30 K. Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Berlin, 1947), 14.
31 „Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie,“ in Frühschriften (Stuttgart, 1953), 222f.
32 K. Marx, Kritik des Gothaer Programms (1875) (Berlin, 1946), 29.
33 Lenin, Ausgewählte Werke (Moscow, 1947), II:333.
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