In the place of our usual bimonthly American Newsletter, Wallace Hamilton sends us this article from the January issue of "The Catholic Worker." The author, Robert Ludlow, is one of the main younger men in the Catholic Worker Movement, was a C.O. during the war, and here gives "a pretty accurate statement of radical Catholicism at the present time."

—"N.Z. Christian Pacifist," March, 1948.

We have gone a great way this past year of 1947, a great way towards the destruction of man, a great way towards completion of a thoroughly statist society. It is all based on fear and on greed and on the "American way of life." It has been a year of 100 per cent. Americanism.

Americanism

Americanism, in the concrete means this—it means that eight Negroes were murdered at the Anguilla camp in Georgia and the guards who murdered them were given a clean bill of health by a federal jury in Brunswick, Georgia. It means that two-thirds of the draft violators are still in jail due to failure to grant a general Christmas amnesty, it means that one may have religious scruples against service in the army but not intellectual or philosophical ones—so that it becomes the business of the State to decide what religion is. It means that a mink coat was given on the Walter Winchell programme to whoever sent in the most superficial definition of a Communist. Mink coats! And millions in Europe and Asia starving. Mink coats! And an unemployable man in New York City forced to struggle along on 12 dollars a weke. Mink coats! And a poor couple in Pennsylvania, the husband bed-ridden and the wife constantly in attendance, forced to make ends met on 63 dollars and 80 cents a month. What a marvellous service this disgusting display of conspicuous consumption renders to Marxism!

Hysteria

Americanism means that if you applaud Paul Robeson's singing you are a Communist. It means that if you go to Columbia University you can't hear Howard Fast lecture or if you go to the University of Wisconsin you can't hear Cal Marzani. It means being dragged out of the marriage bed at 4.30 in the morning and being questioned as to your political beliefs. It means that, if you're a government employee, you can't belong to the Communist party, despite the fact that it is a legal party. It means compulsion, if you're a labour leader, and the signing of an affidavit stating you are not a member of the Communist party. It means government by fear, by hysteria, by ignorance.

Marshall Plan

Americanism means an edict by the United States Government stating that if there are any changes in the Greek cabinet American aid will not be forthcoming. It means the Marshall Plan for aiding capitalism in Europe to reindustrialize the Ruhr valley and to put up a last ditch fight against Communism. It means confusing this plan with the feeding of Europe so that those who oppose it (because, as Dom Luigi Sturzo points out. The feeding is strictly subsidiary to the economic and political domination of American capitalism) are accused of sacrificing lives to an ideology. Those accusing being blind, in the midst of their emotions, to the concrete facts of the situation. Facts not to be found in the idealistic wordings of documents, Marshall Plans, etc., but in the day to day workings of the State Department.

Question of Justice

What is this question of feeding Europe and Asia? Is it one of charity? It is not. For what we possess beyond our actual needs belongs of right and in justice to those who do not have it. They owe us nothing in return—certainly nothing of political or economic allegiance which the Marshall Plan (in reality, not on paper) and the Truman Doctrine (even on paper) forces on them. We must protest this identification of the Marshall Plan with feeding Europe or with any resemblance to Christian charity—it is but another plank in American "self-interest." as Senator Vanderburg approvingly points out. It is the same type of "self interest" which has closed the doors of the country to the dispossessed, which has stood callously by and watched the miseries of the Jews and other homeless peoples and has lifted no finger to aid—unless it be to aid the Greek Government murder Communists.

Disloyal

Americanism has meant the establishment of a Fascist Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities—which is again government by fear and intimidation, so that anyone who shows concern for the ills besetting the country is declared disloyal.

On May Day of 1947 we Catholics, in our smugness, repaired to cathedral and chapel to pray for Communists. Much more might we well have prayed for ourselves, that we might proceed in charity and understanding of our separated brethren who only too often are Christian in act, despite their Marxian materialism, while we observe the legalities of religion and act alien to the spirit of Christ. Instead our "pious" societies put out vicious booklets, aping the worst features of cheap tabloids and comic strips and which accuse Communists of everything from anti-Semitism to mercy killing. And these manuals of hate are conditioning Catholic youth for war, for organized murder, for Fascism at home.

More Deadly Weapons

Rear-Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias states that "if every atom bomb and facilities for its manufacture were destroyed tomorrow, there would still be available weapons that would wipe the last vestige of human, animal and vegetable life from the face of the earth . . . the atom bomb is not being neglected either. We now have bombs 50 times more powerful than those dropped at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They were of a primitive type already obsolete when used. These modern weapons bear only slight similarity to conventional armaments of the past, permit the waging of inter-continental wars from long distances. They are designed to destroy life in enormous areas ... in the light of those developments our most cherished conventional armaments—aircraft carriers, lava-spraying incendiary bombs and automatically fed heavy guns—represent an era of warfare that will never again return." This also is what Americanism means in reality. And that, in the light of this, our patriots still call for regimentation and military training—not because it will serve any purpose in defence, but because it means disciplined Fascist youth for America. Verily, it is a compliment these days to be called un-American!

Question of Russia

It is not a question of being naive about Russia. The Workers Defence League estimates there are at least 20,000,000 human beings in the world today in actual or virtual slavery. And that at least half of the slaves in the world today are within the orbit of Soviet Russia. We have our share of the remainder, peonage in the south and our concentration camps during the war. And these things exist in root and as inevitable consequences of capitalism. And we are not going to solve it by distributing fantastic pamphlets that only add to the misunderstandings and cater to the prejudices of the day. For Catholics should oppose these things, not by advocating Americanism, but by frank realization of the evils of national states and by a Christian anarchism that, while not rejecting all government, does reject the centralized state which we have known since the 16th century.

Extreme Leftism

And it should be an opposition from the left, for it will be an extreme leftist position that will carry the full implications of Christianity.

"The Catholic Worker," in opposing not only the economics of capitalism but the very spirit of it is to the left of the Marxists who make no protest but rather utilize some of the worst industrial features of capitalist society. As such, as extreme leftists, It is our privilege to be accounted unAmerican.

Un-American

It is our great privilege to be unAmerican because to be American is to betray Christianity. In the concrete, in actual fact, to be American is to believe in capitalism, imperialism, militarism, nationalism, and mediocrity. It is the antithesis of being Christian. It is devotion to the world, to success, to material values, to national and personal pride and greed. It is to contain within oneself and within the nation the seeds of Fascist and Marxist materialism which, regarding man as less than a person, subordinates him to the centralized state. The alternative today is that of Christian anarchism.