Although it feels new to have a socialist mayor in America, it is not unprecedented. Milwaukee has had three different socialist mayors, and socialists won a smattering of city halls in the early 20th century, including in Midwestern cities like Minneapolis and Davenport, Iowa. But the election of Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, last year in New York City has raised the visibility of candidates who identify as socialist or endorse a socialist agenda. Some, like U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, have notched Democratic primary victories, while Wisconsin’s Francesca Hong fell a bit short in that state’s gubernatorial primary. In general, socialism seems to be a growing force in American politics, with one poll finding that one-third of all Democrats now identify with the label.
But is socialism, or more precisely the democratic socialist label claimed by Mr. Mamdani, compatible with Catholicism? There are some lessons that Catholics can glean from the last time that socialism was influential in America. One comes from Servant of God Dorothy Day, who began her life as a radical socialist but through her conversion to Catholicism reimagined how she would serve the poor.
In the early part of the last century, socialism was not such a scary word. It represented a variety of opinions and goals united by a belief in vigorous government action on behalf of workers. After the 1940s, socialists began to drop out of the American scene, when the term had become associated with the totalitarian regimes in Soviet Russia and Communist China. But for a while the kindler, gentler version of socialism seemed to be an especially good fit for the American Midwest.
The economic inequality and unfair employment practices of the Gilded Age, covering roughly the last quarter of the 19th century, prompted the rise of worker and farmer movements including the American Federation of Labor (founded in Columbus, Ohio) and the National Grange. These worker movements often cooperated with Christian movements for social reform. Protestant preachers of the “social Gospel,” along with reformers like Jane Addams, promoted care for the poor, the outcast and the immigrant in private and public life.
Among Catholics, the social reform movement drew inspiration from Pope Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical on human labor and Catholic social teaching, “Rerum Novarum” (1891)—which the current pope, who took the name Leo XIV, has frequently echoed. The most famous member of the Catholic social reform movement may be Dorothy Day, who spent part of her childhood in Chicago. As a young woman, Day wrote for socialist papers like The Liberator and The Call. Then, after converting to Catholicism in 1927, she co-founded the still-influential Catholic Worker movement, but she moved away from the label of socialist. This should not be surprising: The church had condemned the ideology in “Rerum Novarum,” and Pope Pius XI’s “Quadragesimo Anno,” released in 1931, affirmed in no uncertain terms that “no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist” (No. 120).
For Day, the move away from socialism was not simply a necessary act of obedience but a growth in her worldview and perception of things. “Our failure has been not to love enough,” she wrote in On Pilgrimage. “This conviction brought me to a rejection of the radical movement after my early membership in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist affiliates I worked with.”
The problem for Day, and the Catholic Church, was that these movements made a place for hate—hatred of capitalists, hatred of bosses, etc. They focused on class conflict at the expense of the concrete love of the person in front of us. Thus, Pope Pius XI in “Quadragesimo Anno” worried about the “enmities and mutual hatred” that can accompany a “class struggle” (No. 114). Today, we see some strands of this in the expressions of support for the man who has pleaded guilty to stalking and murdering Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare.
At the same time, Pius XI wrote that “it cannot be denied that [socialism’s] demands at times come very near those that Christian reformers of society justly insist upon.” Namely, Christian reformers insist upon the rights of workers to good working conditions, fair pay and a decent standard of living. In pursuit of this, workers are called to join voluntary associations that will allow them to meet those in ownership on fair terms.
Socialism, as it was understood by Leo XIII and Pius XI, goes beyond these claims of social justice by proposing that the state expropriate private industry. (Its more radical form, communism, calls for the total abolition of private property, through violence if necessary.) While Pius XI affirms that a more moderate, nonviolent form of socialism gets some things right, he still concluded that it is contrary to a Catholic worldview.
Pope John Paul II furthered this argument in his encyclical “Centesimus Annus,” writing that “State control of the means of production…would reduce every citizen to being a ‘cog’ in the State machine” (No. 15). Warning that a too-powerful state violates personal dignity and stifles creativity, he wrote, “Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism” (No. 13). A powerful central state also violates the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which holds that no higher level of organization should take over what can be done by lower and local levels, such that the state cannot and should not replace the family, civil society, or private projects and initiatives.
Because few have had a chance to govern, it is not yet clear how closely those who call themselves democratic socialists today fit the definition of socialism that so concerned Leo XIII, Pius XI and John Paul II. Figures like Mr. Mamdani have emphasized policies, such as state-subsidized child care, free public transit and a more progressive income tax, that do not clearly violate Catholic social teaching—though “tax the rich” policies that cross the line into wealth confiscation bring to mind Pius XI’s admonition in “Quadragesimo Anno” that “it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community” (No. 79).
In English, “Rerum Novarum” means “New Things.” We are now living in a time of new things and some old things (like Midwestern socialism) that seem new to us. Catholics desiring to be faithful to the social doctrine of their church are asked to examine these movements and candidates with a discerning eye, looking to understand what truly promotes the dignity and freedom of every human person, and what runs contrary to that dignity. Called to defend the rights and worth of working people, Catholics are asked to do so in a manner that holds together the entire fabric of Christian ethics, in fraternal affection and a desire for the good of all. This fraternal affection also means avoiding the temptation to scapegoat religious or ethnic minorities, as often happens in times of political anxiety.
The longstanding culture of concern for the common man is a credit to the Midwest. The idea of the farmer, the factory worker and the mechanic as noble and worthy people is one in keeping with a Christian culture. Catholics in the Midwest and elsewhere are called to work for what Pope Pius XI called “the worker’s human dignity.” This will be the work of each Catholic conscience, and of those consciences in community. As Catholics face new things, they have a treasury of wisdom from ages past upon which they can draw. The effort to adhere to this patrimony and to live it in practice is what made Dorothy Day not merely an activist but a saint.
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