The Popes and Democracy - Part I. General Notions 5. Socialism and Collectivism

Marxism has a system too: Socialism leading to Communism. True Communism is probably impossible to achieve, although it was tried in China. Russia is really a Socialist country. Marxism has an economic system: Collectivism. Basically, however, there is no intrinsic difference between Socialism and Democracy (which is what I shall attempt to show in the following pages). The differences lie only in the methods used, and these methods are bound to converge, are, in fact, already converging. Collectivism is nothing but State Capitalism, a far worse form than in the West. To sum up, both Democracy and Socialism are attempting to set up the City of Man. They are the offsprings of the same errors; belief in man and rejection of God. "The greatest folly of our age is to attempt to construct a lasting and fruitful temporal order without the only foundation on which it can endure, namely, God." (John XXIII, "Mater et Magistra") A Christian Democracy is just a dream; in fact, a contradiction in terms as will be shown later. The City of God cannot be built but in a Monarchical order because, "such was the form of government established by divine law. For Moses and his successors governed the people in such a way that each of them was ruler over all; so that there was a kind of kingdom." ("Summa", Part I, 2, a 105, a.l.)