Catholic communism

Catholic communism, also known as White Bolshevism,^[1] is a form of Christian communism that combines Catholicism with communism. Known as cattocomunismo in Italian, Catholic communism first emerged in Italy in the 1930s amongst the members of Catholic Action.^[2] Catholic communists embraced communism as the realization of Catholic social teaching and accepted historical materialism, but also rejected the dialectical materialism and atheism of Marxist-Leninism.^[3]

In a historiographical sense, Catholic communism developed within the Party of the Christian Left, a significant component of the Catholic groups that carried out the Italian resistance to Nazism and which had among their exponents Franco Rodano, Felice Balbo, and Adriano Ossicini.^[4][5]

Catholic dialogue with communism started in the end of the 19th century in Italy and other Catholic countries in Europe. Socialist trade unions successfully improved the living conditions of the workers by forcing concessions and better labour contracts from employers via strikes. Catholic workers recognized that the socialist aim of improving the living conditions of the poor overlapped with Catholicism, but were concerned about the anti-clericalism and anti-theism of socialism. Catholics responded with creating their own political associations and trade unions; the labor movement became divided between "red" (socialist) and "white" (Catholic) trade unions.^[6]

After World War I, there developed a left-wing Catholic tendency in white trade unions, such as those in Italy. Regionally, left-wing Catholic unions became powerful - in Verona, land strikes organized by left-wing Catholic movement gathered over 150,000 ‘white’ workers. These trade unions explored the concept of "inter-classism", where both socialist and Catholic trade unions could unite in order to combat not only economic exploitation, but also the looming fascist threat in Italy. However, these alliances failed to materialize as socialist trade unions were unwilling to break with their anti-clericalism - left-wing Catholics were branded as "idiotic" and "a grotesque deformation of workers’ trade unionism". The Italian Socialist Party went as far as argue that socialist should fight left-wing Catholics "with greater force than those on the right." However, other socialists, such as Antonio Gramsci were supportive of left-wing Catholicism.^[1]

The left-wing Catholicism that developed in Italy in the 1910s and 1920s was described as "White Bolshevism". It embraced the religious rituals and traditions of the Italian peasantry, while also embracing the economic demands of socialism.^[6] One of the theoreticians of this current, Catholic socialist, Cesare Seassaro, wrote that anticlericalism was part of bourgeois ideology and that many priests should be seen as workers.^[1] In emerging Catholic communism, the Gospel was "interpreted as a sublime Labour Charter". It gained the attention of numerous prominent socialists - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, for example, praised the movement, and argued tha the Acts of the Apostles "showed perfectly how communism was practised among ancient Christian communities". Claudia Baldoli noted that "the Christian spirit that permeated the speeches of some well-known socialist leaders proved powerful enough to prompt conversions to the priesthood".^[6]

Catholic communism developed further in the 1930s and 1940s, and connected the resurrection of Christ to the Russian Revolution. A leader of a "white Bolshevik" trade union in Italy, Guido Miglioli, travelled to Soviet Union and promoted a "Christian vision of Bolshevism". Miglioli argued that the Catholic demands of social justice and charity could only be obtained through a revolution; he noted that a policy that did not accept class struggle would be stillborn as no collaboration or solidarity could be expected from the landowners. Miglioli also wrote that the message of Russian Bolshevik was ultimately Christian, and that the Bolsheviks "were welcomed by the masses as apostles and bearers of a message of social justice and brotherhood". He stressed that peasants who made the Russian Revolution possible were "extraordinarily religious" and that "they adore God who had created him; they love the man who had redeemed Him".^[6]

Arthur Koestler, Hungarian communist who later became disillusioned with it, wrote that both Catholicism and communism provided viable "theoretical blueprints of the future". He saw Catholicism as an important complement to Communism, as it "combined the spiritual realm with the promise of social revolution". Koestler argued that the communist and Catholic utopia were highly compatible, although he would abandon Marxism's because of Marx's claim about religion that "in the brightness of day the lamp would become superfluous".^[6]

Miglioli and his Catholic communists circles insisted that their views merely represent the Catholic social teaching. When asked why he was a Catholic rather than a communist if he was willing to praise the Soviet revolution, he replied that "Christianity brought communism beyond the limits of earthly life". He praised the Constitution of the Soviet Union as an "evangelical document" and argued that Bolsheviks spoke to peasantry in biblical language: "The peasants received the land they needed for their work, and no one would be allowed to exploit them or to become rich at the expense of their efforts. In the same way, God had told Moses that he would provide manna for his people; however, if stored, it would have perished, so no accumulation was allowed, and everyone would receive according to their own needs."^[6]

The expression Catholic communism also appears in the writings of Augusto Del Noce (see Il cattolico comunista , 1981) and Gianni Baget Bozzo.

In that year the journalist Enzo Bettiza published the essay European Communism in which he uses the term.^[7]

• Catholicism and socialism
• Liberation Theology