Pious Socialists

John Cort, a jovial and wholly attractive man who has long written on labor and other questions for The Commonweal, is now editing a mimeographed newsletter called Religious Socialism. He has attracted to its pages Harvey Cox, Rosemary Reuther, Peter Steinfels, and others who desire a socialist state. Yet an odd thing has happened to socialism since World War II, and not only among religious socialists. Socialism used to stand for a hard-headed economic alternative: the nationalization of industries, the relative quality of wages, even the banishment of money. It is now described by its followers mainly as a moral vision; and its stress is not upon economics but upon politics.

Not long ago, for example, Mr. Steinfels attributed to Dissent magazine, with its 6,000 subscribers, the awakening of extraordinary excitement on the part of American intellectuals. Since there are some thirty thousand members in the American Academy of Religion, more than 600,000 college professors, at least as many journalists, and considerably larger numbers of government officials concerned with doing the public good, Dissent would not seem to have knocked the world of intellect dead. But what is more striking in the Steinfels review is his description of the socialism currently espoused in the magazine’s pages.

About the Author

Michael Novak

Michael Novak was a Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat.

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John Cort, a jovial and wholly attractive man who has long written on labor and other questions for The Commonweal, is now editing a mimeographed newsletter called Religious Socialism. He has attracted to its pages Harvey Cox, Rosemary Reuther, Peter Steinfels, and others who desire a socialist state. Yet an odd thing has happened to socialism since World War II, and not only among religious socialists. Socialism used to stand for a hard-headed economic alternative: the nationalization of industries, the relative quality of wages, even the banishment of money. It is now described by its followers mainly as a moral vision; and its stress is not upon economics but upon politics.

Not long ago, for example, Mr. Steinfels attributed to Dissent magazine, with its 6,000 subscribers, the awakening of extraordinary excitement on the part of American intellectuals. Since there are some thirty thousand members in the American Academy of Religion, more than 600,000 college professors, at least as many journalists, and considerably larger numbers of government officials concerned with doing the public good, Dissent would not seem to have knocked the world of intellect dead. But what is more striking in the Steinfels review is his description of the socialism currently espoused in the magazine’s pages.