Dr. Joseph Ferraro †
Comment about the book “Marx against the Marxist”.
The official position of the Catholic hierarchy on the injustice of capitalism is to keep the worker in a state of misery due to a salary insufficient to meet his basic needs. Never the less, in his book Marx against the Marxist, Porfirio Miranda breaks away from this position maintaining that in the theory of surplus value, Marx “has found the key to the whole problem of social injustice”. “Basically it is the continual victimization of the working class” by the capitalists and therefore the anti-reformism of Marx is relentless.
Porfirio develops this theory in detail in this book, proving its moral content and for him its Christian side, that is, that the principal exploitation of capitalism does not consist in an unequal distribution of wealth in society beginning with the little that the capitalist pays his workers. The inequality of this distribution is due to the abuse of the system that, in theory, could be rectified in such a way that capitalism would then become a just economic system. On the other hand, the principal aspect of exploitation by the capitalist system is that the worker must receive less salary than his worth; the capitalist is stealing the difference. That is to say, it does not matter how well the proletariat lives – with several cars, his own house, etc. – with a better distribution of wealth, the capitalist is still stealing from the worker and the corresponding economic system is essentially unjust. For Miranda, then, Marx’s condemnation of the capitalist system is moral and the reasons for the communist revolution and the existence of a communist society are, in essence, moral or Christian.
The author masterfully develops his position, giving the reader a rich selection of citations taken from the works of Marx and Engels, not only in relation with the moral side of exploitation with that of Marx’s economic theory of surplus value, but also to show Marx’s profound humanity and to find a Christian scatology in a classless communist society. Also, amongst the examples taken from Marx, the author discovers evidence that indicates that the first is deist not atheist.
The book mentioned presents a deeper insight into the theory of Marx than in his book Marx and the Bible. In the latter, Miranda is still under the influence of the pontific social doctrine. In Communism in the Bible, on the other hand, even though Marx is mentioned, the basic theme is that communism in the West is not entirely because of Marx but is found in the New Testament, that is to say, in the Book of Acts.
From the last development comes Marx against the Marxist which is a book that is well worth reading and thinking about.
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