Every effort must be made to tame unbridled capitalism and implement a social market economy worldwide if a re-emergence of communism is to be avoided, the president of the German Bishops’ Conference and member of the C9 advisory council of cardinals, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, has warned.
“I am sure that we will see a renaissance of communism. [Karl] Marx was quite right in certain of his analyses, for instance, in what he said about the accumulation of capital and about labour power as a commodity,” the cardinal said in a long interview in Welt am Sonntag on 23 December.
Capitalism had had many negative consequences in recent years and that had led to a “feeling of massive bitterness”, he pointed out. “Especially after the fall of the Iron Curtain, we allowed these [capitalist] processes a free rein. Already in 1991, Pope St John Paul II had warned that if capitalism did not solve the problem of injustice, the old ideologies would return – and that still holds today”, he underlined.
Germany introduced a social market economy in 1945, which had been successful in the social field, he recalled. “It is now a case of creating a similar framework globally. This will be exceedingly difficult but remains a must.” The Paris Climate Agreement was one such attempt, he said.
Cardinal Marx also commented on same-sex marriage, legalised by the Bundestag last year. Marriage could not be redefined by the state, he said. It should remain confined to a relationship between a man and a woman for the purpose of transmitting new life. That was how it had been defined by the German constitutional court. This did not discriminate against civil partnerships, he insisted.
He also said surrogate motherhood and egg donation reduced children to “products”.
Loading ...
