The Cold Lie of the Warmth of Collectivism

Bishop Robert Barron tweeted in response to Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural address, accomplishing something increasingly rare in public discourse, since he cut through rhetorical fog and exposed a philosophical fault line that modern politics bends over backwards to obscure. When Mamdani announced his intention to replace what he called “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” the line sounded poetic, therapeutic, morally self-assured, and even politically superior. Therefore, it also revealed a stunning ignorance of history paired with an astonishing confidence in moral abstraction. Bishop Barron’s response, sharp without theatrical outrage, reminded readers that collectivism carries a historical body count measured in the tens of millions and a moral logic that consistently devours the human person it claims to protect.

The phrase “warmth of collectivism” works precisely because it trades on emotional suggestion rather than historical memory. Collectivism consistently presents itself as humane, relational, and morally elevated, while individual freedom gets caricatured as cold, atomized, and socially corrosive. Consequently, the debate begins on sentimental terrain rather than factual, historical ground. The twentieth century offers abundant clarity on where collectivist “warmth” leads once translated into policy, slaughter, power, and coercion. From the Soviet Union to Maoist China, from Pol Pot’s Cambodia to Castro’s Cuba, collectivist systems required the systematic, widespread erasure of dissent, the flattening of human difference, and the subordination of conscience to ideology. Marx was unambiguous about the centrality of force in coercing collectivism, writing, “the [socialist] unity is brought about by force,”¹ and “we have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”² The only warmth collectivism has consistently provided has come as the result of hot lead proceeding from the barrel of government-directed rifles. History proves that these outcomes occurred by design rather than accident, since collectivism demands a totalizing vision of the good enforced through centralized authority.

Bishop Barron’s frustration arises from a deeper misrepresentation embedded in Mamdani’s language. The target of his condemnation, “rugged individualism,” appears as a straw figure rather than a serious engagement with economic history or Christian social teaching. What Mamdani describes as frigidity more closely resembles a moral rejection of the market economy itself, along with the human ingenuity, creativity, innovation, and upward mobility that market systems unleash when paired with moral norms and limited government. Therefore, his critique drifts toward an implicit condemnation of private initiative, private wealth, and voluntary exchange, which Catholic social teaching has repeatedly defended as expressions of human dignity rather than threats to it.

The Church’s engagement with economic life has always resisted ideological extremes. Catholic social teaching affirms the human person as creative, relational, and responsible, which leads to an affirmation of economic freedom driven by human dignity, and ordered toward the common good. This position finds one of its clearest articulations in Centesimus Annus, where John Paul II explicitly praises the market economy as the system that best recognizes the role of human creativity, initiative, and responsibility in economic life. The encyclical emphasizes that economic freedom flows from the truth about the human person as a moral agent capable of industry, innovation, cooperation, and stewardship. Consequently, the market emerges as a moral arena requiring virtue rather than a moral vacuum requiring replacement.

This vision stands in direct contrast to collectivist frameworks that reduce the human person to a unit of production or a recipient of state provision. Collectivism fails to account for human creativity apart from centralized planning, which inevitably leads to stagnation, coercion, cultural decay, and mass murder. Economic history repeatedly demonstrates that societies embracing market freedom within moral and legal constraints generate wealth, reduce poverty, and foster innovation at scales collectivist systems fail to approach. Therefore, to dismiss market economies as morally frigid requires either obtuse historical amnesia or ideological commitment strong enough to deceptively override evidence.

I wish to be clear here: Christian thought simultaneously refuses to baptize radical individualism. The human person never exists in isolation, nor does human flourishing arise from self-enclosed autonomy. The Christian revelation presents this tension between the one and the many, between individual goods and the common good. Christianity addresses this tension by rejecting false binaries rather than oscillating between them. This insight finds imaginative expression in the literature of Madeleine L’Engle and C. S. Lewis, whose fictional worlds, explored by Jordan Ballor, expose the spiritual dangers lurking at both extremes.

In A Wrinkle in Time, L’Engle presents Camazotz as a vision of collectivist perfection that achieves harmony through the annihilation of individuality. The planet operates under a single mind, enforcing uniformity in thought, movement, and desire. Order replaces freedom, efficiency replaces love, and obedience replaces conscience. The horror of Camazotz arises from its false peace, since difference becomes disorder and personality becomes pathology. L’Engle’s portrayal exposes collectivism as a spiritual project seeking salvation through control, where unity emerges through coercion rather than communion.

Lewis offers a complementary warning in The Great Divorce, where hell manifests as radical and absolute self-sovereignty. Each soul retreats into private worlds shaped entirely by personal grievance, resentment, or pride. Distance replaces community, autonomy replaces love, and isolation becomes self-imposed. Lewis reveals that individualism unmoored from truth dissolves the very relationships that make individuality meaningful. Consequently, hell becomes an infinite suburb of loneliness, where every person reigns supreme over nothing but their own emptiness.

Together, L’Engle and Lewis illuminate the Christian refusal to choose between collectivism and individualism. Christianity affirms the human person as irreducibly unique and irreducibly relational. Genesis presents humanity created in God’s image, entrusted with stewardship over creation, and embedded within networks of relationship from the beginning. The biblical vision locates dignity in personhood rather than productivity, while locating flourishing within community rather than absorption. Therefore, the common good emerges as a moral horizon shaped by justice, charity, and responsibility rather than an abstract total imposed from above.

Social institutions play a decisive role in this framework. Families, churches, schools, businesses, and civic associations mediate between the individual and the state, preserving freedom while cultivating responsibility. Catholic social teaching emphasizes subsidiarity precisely because it protects human creativity at local levels while resisting bureaucratic centralization. When these mediating institutions flourish, societies experience both solidarity and freedom. When they erode, individuals become vulnerable to state expansion or cultural fragmentation.

Mamdani’s rhetoric overlooks this institutional economy entirely. His invocation of collectivist “warmth” suggests a society where moral responsibility flows upward toward centralized authority rather than outward through voluntary association. Such a vision treats government as the primary engine of the common good rather than one participant among many. History shows that this inversion consistently leads to moral infantilization, economic inefficiency, and political coercion. Therefore, Barron’s exasperation reflects more than ideological disagreement. It reflects concern over the repetition of historical intellectual errors whose consequences remain visible in bloodshed across continents and generations.

The Church’s favorable stance toward the market economy arises from theological anthropology rather than partisan allegiance. Markets recognize that human beings possess intelligence, creativity, and moral agency. They allow individuals to cooperate freely, take risks, create value, and serve one another through exchange. When ordered by virtue and justice, market systems harness human potential in ways collectivist planning consistently suppresses. This affirmation never denies the need for moral limits, social safety nets, or communal responsibility. It insists instead that dignity flourishes through participation rather than dependency.

Therefore, the supposed “frigidity” Mamdani condemns reflects a misunderstanding of freedom itself. Economic liberty, rightly understood, affirms the human capacity to imagine, build, and contribute. It allows persons to rise through effort, creativity, and cooperation rather than political favor. The Church has consistently defended this vision precisely because it aligns with a view of the human person as co-creator, steward, and moral agent before God.

Barron’s closing plea, exasperated yet grounded, resonates because it speaks from historical awareness rather than ideological enthusiasm. The warmth of collectivism has repeatedly arrived hand in hand with repression, organized massacre, scarcity, and cultural flattening. The market economy, imperfect yet resilient, continues to affirm human dignity through freedom ordered toward responsibility. Christianity, standing apart from ideological extremes, offers a richer vision still, one where love rather than control binds the one and the many into a genuine common good. Then again, Mamdani might respond by simply saying collectivist warmth has never been truly tried before, and that he will be the first in history to finally get the experiment right. When that endeavor inevitably fails, may there be a reawakening in the western imagination.

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