Lonergan's complex views of Marx and Marxism
John Raymaker
Hugh Williams
John et al,
Your link to the Maxwell Bindernage article in “The Imaginative Conservative” publication as a young American’s reaction to the “America” article by the young Canadian Dean Dettioff could open up a much more serious discussion if one was up to it …
I hate to say this … but most American’s are challenged to examine Marxism with the ‘subtlety and nuance’ it warrants largely because of the vehement ‘anti-communism’ that is present in many parts of American intellectual and popular culture. We in Canada are not immune to this, but our experience of it tends to be much less virulent.
Bindernage is relatively civil but his short piece, it seems to me, despite his relatively young age, is entirely an exercise in apologetics largely from an earlier time. His listing of those aspects of Marx’s thought that would presumptuously and unfortunately close off real and serious engagement with the Marxist tradition – ‘the inherent materialism’, ‘the materialist eschatology’, ‘the denial of the afterlife’, ‘the neglect of interior conversion’, and ‘the violence associated with Marxism’… all require a much fuller critical treatment and discussion.
Towards this end, I’ll provide at least for now the actual link to Dettioff’s more substantive “America” article - https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/07/23/catholic-case-communism/
Dettioff, who himself is, again, relatively young, provides a somewhat ad hominem update as to why Christians should consider the socialist-communist viewpoint. It is not the scholarly treatment that one gets in Schillebeeckx and Doran. Dettioff is basically sharing a ‘story’ of what he finds, especially today, to be of significant and serious relevance for our human situation and, dare I say it … he is likely under the influence of Pope Francis at the time (2019) of his writing.
If anyone is really interested in a Christian’s serious engagement with Marxist thought, I can think of nothing better than Schillebeeckx’s part four “God’s Glory and Man’s Truth, Well-being and Happiness” of his Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (1983). Schillebeeckx is not, as near as I can tell, a Christian-Marxist but he has no irrational fears of Marxism, and he says clearly and provocatively, as he introduces his extraordinary treatment of Marxist thought – “The theology of the oppressed is not that of the converted. (and) Both have something to say to us” (p.650). This is just one example of a very subtle and profound distinction necessary for the Christian’s approach to Marxism provided by someone who is highly competent in both scripture and dogmatic theology. (Schillebeeckx knows well the creative tensions that have long existed between these two dimensions in the Christian tradition, … and which any honest and serious confrontation with Marxism, in these times, will ultimately force the thinking Christian to face up to ….)
Hugh
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